2008 showed an unbelievable growth for Twitter as THE place for microblogging. With competitors like Pownce closing their doors, it seems that Twitter has the stronger cards to become the sole survivor in this field.

The Twitter ecosystem is expanding so fast, that the switching costs for users are becoming even higher the more they get connected in the network. Twitter has the network advantages. For Twitter I expect the break into mainstream will come in 2009, if their server park can handle the load!

Twitter Goes Mainstream

1. Mainstream media is starting to pay attention. A number of articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal must have brought Twitter under the eyes of thousands of non Silicon Valley Internet users. We in Silicon Valley tend to think everybody is aware of all the latest tools and services just launched yesterday. This, however, is off course the opposite. Twitter was a rather unfamiliar phenomenon in rural US or even non-Silicon Valley.
2. Important news worthy events are well documented and break on Twitter. Lately I think about the Mumbai shootings and the plane crash in Denver. But earlier in 2008 a number of events were first broken on Twitter, before the traditional media noticed something happened. Earthquakes, fires or riots. News breaks fast & early on Twitter, as everyone can become a “journalist” breaking news. Just imagine how Twitter can help you if you get arrested in a foreign country like Egypt. Here reported on CNN!
3. Early adopters who lost interest will return. In the early stages of Twitter, users didn’t know how to use Twitter to their advantage. The way people use Twitter has changed over time. If you were early enough in the game, somewhere in 2006, I can understand why you abandoned the service. Early at Twitter, people were using the service to sent random messages through Twitter. Some early adopters who lost interest abandoned the service. As the usage of Twitter has changed, these people are losing out of the great value which is currently shared through Twitter. I still am not interested when you are going to the bathroom, or what you had for lunch. Not providing value to the conversation will get you un-followed by me. But then again, why should you care about that!
4. The next president of the US has been using Twitter. Barack Obama was breaking news on Twitter everyday to his more than 100.000 followers. How about that for free publicity or connection to your followers. It does not get more mainstream like this. What’s next, Barack tweeting from an official dinner with Vladimir Putin?
5. CNN is using Twitter for input in News reports. Ricksanchezcnn uses the input from the conversations and replies he gets through Twitter directly in the way he makes television. He gets instant feedback on the subjects CNN is reporting of. It goes even further, Rick is now actually asking his Twitter followers for input on what to cover in any broadcast. Asking a question in the morning, using the responses in afternoons episodes. You can follow this innovative mainstream media journalist also on his blog: Rick Sanchez on CNN
6. Twitterbots are becoming big through adding value. Twitter bots like sports cores (list of teams for directs scores US teams: stevepoland), weather updates, people boarding airplanes or stock quotes are open up the hidden value of being connected on Twitter. Now you can get instant updates on real time information wherever you are. A list of Bots on Twitter can be found on: twitter.pbwiki.com/bots
7. Twitter has become the dominant communication method on conferences. Asking a question on a conference can be difficult. You have to put up your hand, wait for a microphone to come your way, and then you just have to remember what you wanted to ask. How much easier can it be if a moderator is just picking the questions from a pre-communicated twitter account. On the other hand, live tweeting a conference will give people who stay at home the latest download on the content shared on the stage. Conferences will never be the same as without Twitter in the hands of the audience… or the panel.
8. Through Twitter you can actually get your complaint resolved, fast! Do you have a complaint about one of your service companies, Comcast; AT&T or any other company with a long waiting times on the CS support lines? Now try to tweet a nasty message about how this company sucks. You might be surprised how fast a reply is posted to you. Just read the experience of Rebecca, working for SEOmoz in Seattle. Just read how Comcastbill helped her with a complaint, and turned a bad experience she probably would have blogged about into a great experience, which she also blogged about.
9. More services build on Twitter get funded. Stocktwits (@stocktwits) got just funded after being live for just two months. When more services are build on the Twitter API’s, more value is created. Only the services that have real revenue potential will attract VC or angel funding. Twitpay (@twitpay) is another potential that can grow big… 
10. Companies start to communicate PR messages through Twitter. Using Twitter as a marketing instrument is daunting with some companies. Using it strategically to break news about the company opens up new possibilities in the PR field. Twitter cannot only be used for PR, but might also be interesting to get new business partners.

Know When Twitter Has Made It!

1. When Sites about Twitter Tips are set up by Darren Rowse (joking)
2. When you parents are starting to follow you
3. When a Top 10 Twitter jokes is featured by David Letterman
4. When your company is posting Twitter Guidelines with Do’s & Don’ts on the corporate intranet
5. When Twitter messages are being used in court cases
6. When Twitter messages are dominating Google SERP’s
7. When a government sex scandal breaks on Twitter
8. All 26 letters of the alphabet signify a Twitter command
9. When Twitter starts to make money
10. Techcrunch stops writing about Twitter

I’m looking forward to the year to come, as Twitter has played an important role for me in 2008. I connected with more people online than before and discovered a number of interesting blogs to read. How have you used Twitter in 2008, and what are you expecting to get out of Twitter in 2009? The key to use Twitter in 2009 for me, is to create value for the people who are following me & to connect with more people online.

What else can you think about why Twitter will break into mainstream? And when do you know this has happened? I would love to hear from you in the comments, or on Twitter. I’m @TheNextCorner

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why Twitter Will Go Mainstream In 2009

I imagine there are written guidelines somewhere on how to conduct yourself on Twitter, but I haven’t read them and I don’t intend to. I’ve always believed in learning by doing and my first few weeks on Twitter have been an eye-opener. My conclusion — it’s all about agendas.

Fortunately, recognizing someone’s particular Twitter agenda is not that difficult. Just go back through their tweet history and a common thread will likely emerge.

Here are some examples of Twitter modus operandi I’ve witnessed so far:

1. Blog vomit

Twitterfeed will post your blog rss feeds to Twitter automatically and there are Twitter members that use the site purely for that reason. Personally, I see nothing wrong with that, but if you don’t invest some effort in following and conversing with like-minded Twitter members, you might as well be broadcasting to Mars, because no one will notice you.

2. It sucks to be you

I could spend all day watching these people’s tweets. The Buffies and Biffs can’t wait to let you know which expensive wine they just drank, the $1000 suit that had to be returned because it wasn’t up to snuff, and mentioning as many SEO Internet moguls as possible in their tweets, in the unlikely event some of the twinkle will magically rub off on them by osmosis.

3. American Gigolo/Gigoless

They only follow sexy avatars in the hopes of hooking up. Truth is, if you gathered most of these real people in a room, you’d have a Star Trek convention. No offense, I’m just saying.

4. Ain’t nuthin’ but a gold digger

There are Twitter snobs that feel Twitter was created for the sole purpose of hyping their online business. They generally do not converse with anyone who does not share their particular area of expertise. You can follow them, and they will follow you, but don’t expect a “good morning” from them any time soon. They are too busy figuring out ways to outdo the competition. A succubus if there ever was one.

5. Ladies and Gentlemen: Rodney Dangerfield

I call these the one-line-wonders. Posting tweets with a punchline and an imagined rim shot. Hey, I’m witty. Look at me. Problem is, if you take the chance on replying to one of these tweets, you get nuthin’ in return. It’s all one-sided. That’s why stand-up comedians are usually introverts.

6. Secret Squirrel

These are the voyeurs of the community. Seldom, if ever, exchanging dialogue — they just like to watch. Heaven forbid that anyone would actually talk to them — what response could they form? I imagine their lips are stitched shut like in some weird NIN video.

7. Welcome to my tent

It’s all about the numbers and the sheik eagerly welcomes you to his harem of followers with promises of interesting banter and witty repartee. So you click the “Follow” icon and wait. Success — he/she follows you in return. This looks promising. What generally happens, though, is Buffalo Bill flings you down the hole with the other followers, never to be heard from again. How many is too many? Only Precious knows for sure.

8. The Town Crier

If it weren’t for this guy, I’d never know what was going on in the world. A veritable fount of rss feeds from CNN, MSNBC, and Bloomberg, he’s got it down, man. As soon as news breaks, Ron Burgundy has tinyurl’d it, entered his commentary and tweeted it, at lightening speed. How does he do it? I don’t care — I just hope he doesn’t stop or I’d be a complete moron.

9. Tupperware party

I fall into this category, as do most Tweeple. You establish a comfortable group with whom you have regular conversations, albeit in 140 character segments. It’s fun, entertaining and you manage to pump up each others’ egos one tweet at a time. They read and comment on your tweets and blog posts, and vice-versa. You feed off of one another and there is little risk involved. Over time, however, this can get boring. That’s when you go searching for fresh meat, I mean new followers. It’s all good — it’s just part of the game.

10. Combo meal

The longer you frequent Twitter, the more likely you will find yourself developing more than one agenda. A multi-tasker, realizing that one can kill two or three birds with one tweet. Very efficient — managing to pimp your blog or website, spread viral headlines and videos, and flirt — in one perfect 140 character tweet (also referred to as a twoosh.) Barack Obama did it and so can you — achieve total Twitter nirvana.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



10 Twitter Agendas – What’s Yours?

I really enjoyed the post from Sonny Gill yesterday exploring the idea of Broadcasting vs Conversing on Twitter. I think he’s on the money and new Twitter users can learn something from his suggestions – however I wanted to ask the question today:

Is it OK to use Twitter as a Broadcasting Tool?

The reason that I ask the question is that while my main Twitter account (@problogger) is pretty interactive – my secondary one (@digitalps – one connected to my photography site) is not – it’s almost purely used as a broadcasting tool.

Not only do I use it for broadcasting – I don’t follow anyone with the account and yet it still has over 1000 followers. Every day a new tweet automatically goes up on the account pointing to a new post on my blog and every day that tweet sends around 100 people to my site).

While I suspect if I were to use that Twitter account more conversationally that it could be even more effective (it is one of my goals at some point) at this point I’m relatively happy with how it’s working – particularly considering I’ve never really promoted @digitalps beyond a couple of tweets and a single post on my blog.

The other reason I ask the question today about using Twitter as a broadcasting tool is that as I look at the top 10 users of Twitter (in terms of how many people follow them) I notice that 3 of the top ten also use Twitter purely as a broadcasting tool. They have 117,025, 51,030 and 36,168 followers.

While they are either famous or have incredible reach in other ways already – they’re sustaining massive amounts of followers and never really interact with any of them (at least not publicly).

I’m not writing this post to suggest that we should all just use Twitter as a broadcast tool – but I guess I wanted to say that it can be done quite successfully – in some circumstances.

So When is it OK to use Twitter as a Broadcasting Tool?

Let me suggest a few times that ‘broadcasting’ might be appropriate on Twitter:

1. When users know what they’re getting – what strikes me about each of the examples that I’ve used above is that each account has not been used as an interactive tool at any point in it’s history (or at least in my memory of them). When people sign up as followers of these accounts they can clearly see by the archives of tweets from the account that there is no interaction. They know what they’re getting (ie that this is a ‘broadcasting type twitter account) when they sign up and opt into receiving those tweets.

When ‘broadcasting’ becomes dangerous is when you change the rules on your followers and go from using Twitter purely as a conversational tool to using it purely as a broadcasting one.

2. When you’ve got something worthwhile to broadcast – a Twitter account used solely for broadcasting will be increasingly attractive to followers as the quality of the broadcasts increase.

I actually have followers of my photography twitter account thank me all the time for my tweets – because they help them improve their photography. If the tweets were rubbish it’d fail to be useful to people and they’d stop following.

3. When you focus upon a topic/niche – ‘niche’ might not be the right word here but in each of the broadcast examples that I’ve given there is a definite ‘focus’ of what the broadcasted tweets will be about. Barack Obamas tweets are about him and what he and his campaign team are doing, CNN’s account is used for breaking news stories, MacRumors uses theirs to talk about Apple news and my photogrpahy tweets are all obviously about photography.

I guess this taps into points #1 and #2 – users sign up because they have an interest in a specific topic and as long as the tweets are on topic and useful – they don’t mind the lack of interactivity.

4. When you mix it up – of the 7 top users of Twitter that don’t use Twitter purely as a broadcasting tool it is interesting to note that most of them DO use Twitter to ‘broadcast’ from time to time. They tweet their own links, point people to their own projects etc on a semi-regular basis – but it’s not overwhelming.

I find on my @problogger Twitter account that I get very positive feedback from people when links to my own posts go up on the account. What I find though is that my followers are much more open to seeing my links if I’m also posting other interesting links and mixing up my tweets with other interactions (replies to others, tweets about my day, reflections on topics that I’m interested in etc). The more variety I inject into my tweets the more positive feedback I get and the more people seem to click on my own broadcast style tweets.

What Do You Think?

Please don’t get me wrong – I love Twitter most when it is used conversationally, when people truly connect and where it’s used relationally. However I’m not sure it always needs to be used in this way and actually love to see people using it in a variety of ways also.

I’m interested to hear how you use Twitter. Do you ‘broadcast’, ‘converse’ do both or perhaps use Twitter in a completely different way?

I’d also love to see examples of some of the most effective uses of Twitter that you’ve seen.

I’m looking forward to your comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



When is Broadcasting OK on Twitter?