Is Twitter a Popular Marketing Tool?

by relaxedguy on April 9, 2009

The Progress Bar read by people interested in emerging Internet marketing, technology, social media, reputation, virtual environments, blogs, the Boston Internet scene and much more. If you like what you see you should subscribe to my RSS feed or via email in the sidebar. Thanks for visiting!

Svetlana Gladkova talks about a survey of online tools used by businesses for marketing.

So while you may think that social media tools are heavily employed by businesses for promotion, the survey has a surprise for you: in fact, only traditional internet tools are actually heavily used by marketing people so direct mail and web analytics are leading the game with 46% and 37% respectively. Other popular internet tools include online advertising (used by 35% of companies) and optimization for search engines (used in 34% of all cases).

At the same time the latest and greatest tools that we’ve only been hyping for a few years now all hold quite low shares in terms of use for marketing: for example, viral marketing, blogs, and podcasts each have 6% of companies using them with Twitter holding the last position in the list with its 2%.

Don’t believe the hype, people, thats all I’m saying. There are a handful of people and companies making millions off of Twitter, the rest are still trying to figure out what it is and how to leverage it as a new communications channel.

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Joshua Schachter on URL Shortener Services

by relaxedguy on April 3, 2009

Joshua schachter, founder of the Delicious social bookmarking service, weighs in on url shorteners.

  • any phone that can run a web browser and thus follow links can also run a proper client, and doesn’t have to hew to the SMS character limit.
  • Shorteners are relatively easy and lightweight to set up. Adding a simple interstitial before the redirect provides an obvious way to monetize. And maybe someday all the link data will be worth something.
  • With a shortening service, you’re adding something that acts like a third DNS resolver, except one that is assembled out of unvetted PHP and MySQL, without the benevolent oversight of luminaries like Dan Kaminsky and St. Postel.
  • A huge proportion of shortened links are just a disguise for spam
  • If the shortener accidentally erases a database, forgets to renew its domain, or just disappears, the link will break.

Well-reasoned responses to a new service in which few people are considering the negative implications.

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Domain names are Dead Due to URL Shortners

by relaxedguy on April 2, 2009

TechCrunch says if (url-shortening service) bit.ly Is Worth $8 Million, TinyURL Is Worth At Least $46 Million. I personally can’t stand short url’s and I bet domain name marketers are even more upset. Why pay a lot of money for a seemingly-great url when it’s going to get morphed and truncated into a mini-url owned by a third party? Much of bit.ly’s success is due to the fact that for some reason it’s the default url for a Twitter dashboard called Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is cool because it also lets you update your Facebook status at the same time.

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Is Twitter Going to Replace SMS?

by relaxedguy on March 19, 2009

Twitter is blowing up in a big way. Serious media coverage happening. Early adopters are going from majority to minority in a short period of time. I don’t like relying on 8-12 external services to make Twitter as comprehensive as I prefer it to be.

And why aren’t more web properties accepting OpenID, Facebook Connect and assorted Google services? Straightforward to implement, what’s keeping websites from making these services available?

Twitter could easily become a primary marketing channel. Kind of Like Myspace leapfrogging over Facebook. Back to basics.

Tech Crunch says Whoa, Twitter Mania.

http://www.techflash.com/Google_exec_Twitter-like_service_more_interesting_with_more_data_41218642.html

VentureBeat expounds: Your mom is leaving MySpace for Facebook (but you aren’t).

ReadWriteWeb emits: Facebook’s New Public Profiles: Good for Businesses, Bad for People  

Today, the new Facebook Publisher box asks you “What’s on your mind?” The change is a nod to the rapidly growing social network Twitter where users answer the question “what are you doing?” and then respond with text, links, photos, videos, and more, thanks to an ecosystem of integrated third-party applications that let users share more than just a simple thought.

Facebook is becoming insanely complex, like a 234 button remote control. Apple, some help here, please.

The new Facebook profile, is too lifestreamy, agree or disagree?

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Top Albums of 2008

by relaxedguy on January 7, 2009

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Facebook Firefox Toolbar Not Working Anymore

by relaxedguy on January 7, 2009

I hardly ever visit Facebook directly, if someone does something like friend me or invite me to something, the Facebook toolbar lets me know about it. Ever since I upgraded to Firefox 3.0.5 for Mac, my Facebook toolbar doesn’t work. I’ve emailed a developer I know at Facebook and am hoping they can fix the issue.

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Just in time for MacWorld, Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard , via The Onion.

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Pitchfork’s 50 Best Albums of 2008

by relaxedguy on December 22, 2008

Get out that iTunes gift card, Pitchfork has selected their top picks for 2008. I just found Flying Lotus, which is spectacular for background music while working. The future of hip-hop some call it. FL is related to Alice Coletrane.

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All Your Comments Belong to Someone Else

by relaxedguy on December 16, 2008

Good TechCrunch overview of how Google and Facebook may win the Comment Wars. This upsets me on several levels. If we had a decent centralized comment management system I could easily link to the comments I’ve left at Disqus, TC and other places. Someday this will be possible. For now, we wait for FB and Google to grow up and make nice.

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Is Twitter’s Business Model Coupons?

by relaxedguy on December 16, 2008

VentureBeat says that Twitter has made Dell $1 million in revenue.

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.

I think corporate accounts will pay for millions of free users, along with the usual ads thrown in once they figure that out. Targeted ads should be pretty straightward to implement.

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