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“…you can glimpse into the lives of so many strangers and as a participant you can share what you’re thinking or doing at any given moment. It’s an act of defiance - or desperation? - against existential angst and the aloneness of the human condition.”
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“…with Web 2.0 technology, we are as clueless as our stone age ancestors when it comes to answering the question of existence, but the fact that we stand more fragmented than ever before this question, makes it all the more heavy.”
Entries from March 2007
links for 2007-03-25
March 25th, 2007 ·
Tags: Daily Links
Justin.tv Buzz is Building
March 24th, 2007 ·
I am very, very intrigued by the Justin.tv project. The whole thing is kind of mindless but I find myself checking in on what he is up to at least once or twice a day. And I don’t think I’m the only one. Do a TwitterSearch on Justin.tv and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
I don’t know what kind of traffic numbers that they’ve had since they launched last week but judging by the degraded video quality recently, I can only imagine that their traffic has been going up steadily. They got a lot of good initial momentum from a post on TechCrunch. But that can only take you so far. Plenty of promising companies have seen an initial spike in traffic after getting mentioned on TechCrunch only to see there traffic level off or go down over time. I think one of the key marketing tools for Justin.tv has been their use of Twitter and posting their phone number (415-948-3219) on the Justin.tv web site so that he can receive calls and text messages from his audience. I don’t know when they decided to use Twitter as one of their marketing channels but the timing couldn’t have been better. Everybody on Twitter seems to be saying something about Justin.tv. This includes heavy hitters like Thomas Hawk, Scott Beale (Laughing Squid), Nick Douglas, Jason Calacanis, and Dave Winer. Scott has a great post today describing his meeting with him last night at Bar None on Union Street in San Francisco. Many people, including myself, saw Scott’s tweet about heading over to Bar None to meet up with Justin.tv. I ended up tuning in to Justin.tv later that night and saw Scott talking to Justin. I had a feeling that Scott would be blogging about his Justin.tv meet-up so I took a few screenshots and sent them off to Scott. He ended up using one of them in his blog post today.
Yes, I know, this whole thing sounds like a big waste of time but I find this thing to be a really interesting mix of technology, social experiment, and innovative marketing. This is another example of a new form of entertainment where the audience is also the content of his show. And by having an audience of bloggers, he is getting the added bonus of his audience promoting his show. For free. That’s viral marketing in it’s purest form. I predict that we will see Justin on a major talk show in the next month or so (Jimmy Kimmel, Good Morning America, etc.). And it will be fascinating to tune into Justin.tv when those interviews happen. We’ll be able to follow along (from his point of view) when he arrives at the set, hang out in the green room with him, walk on to the stage, and look into the camera and the bright lights when the interview starts.
Update:
After taking a closer look at the chat room on Justin.tv I am less enthusiastic about their chances for mainstream success. That chat room is an unfiltered stream of really hateful comments. They either need to turn that chat room off or limit it to people who have gone through some kind of approval process. Maybe stream messages directed to Justin.tv on Twitter? That way there is at least some accountability for what people are saying.
Tags: Web 2.0
links for 2007-03-24
March 24th, 2007 ·
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Scoble likes Apple TV. This is exactly how I would use it. To watch video podcasts - e.g. ScobleShow - on my big-screen TV without messing around with a bunch of wires.
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“Twitter forces into the open a basic schism–between those who want to know what everyone is doing all the time and those who are revolted at the idea of giving up that information or caring about anyone else’s.”
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“…most CIOs serve mainly a control function rather than one of innovation”
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One more reason to blow $300 bucks on Apple TV
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Prediction: Justin will be on a major talkshow - e.g. Jimmy Kimmel - in the next month or so.
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OK, now someone needs to build these cool Twitter hacks.
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Woot appears to be the first to use Twitter as a marketing medium. Who’s next?
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Here come the Apple TV hacks
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Like a digg or del.icio.us button but for Twitter
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Wow, what a chart
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Pretty good desctiption of Twitter here.
Tags: Daily Links
Future of Twitter Part 3 - Will Twitter challenge eBay and Craigslist?
March 23rd, 2007 ·
First off, if they ever go in this direction, Twitter needs to be very careful with how they go about it or else they will lose their loyal users. Maybe they could add a preference setting that allows you to filter out posts related to buying and selling items, similar to the new Filtering feature on Flickr. They might also want to offer a Mature filter to keep out the seedy stuff. I could see some very cool mobile applications built around this. Imagine going to a sold out Arcade Fire show and using Twitter on your mobile phone to find people who are trying to unload unused tickets at the last minute within 0.5 miles of the venue. I would use that.
How would Twitter make money on this? They could charge the seller a fee for showing the For Sale tweet in a prominent location. Or go the craigslist route and charge a fee for real estate listings, job postings, etc.
12/29/2008 Update:
A service called Tweebay just launched a few days ago. They allow you to post items for sale on Twitter. I haven’t had a chance to look at it closely yet but it looks like an interesting concept.
Tags: Predictions · Twitter · Web 2.0
links for 2007-03-23
March 23rd, 2007 ·
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“Some are calling it micro-Blogging, some are calling it web-based chat. I think I’ve got it: Permission-Based Stalking.”
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New local travel site. Currently Bay Area only
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Makes a case against plugging your blog / web site on Twitter
Tags: Daily Links
Future of Twitter - Part 2
March 22nd, 2007 · 2 Comments
Today Steve Rubel points out that Twitter is probably racking up SMS fees on the international tweets. He also points out that the site does not appear to be monetized now and that could be a problem. So building on my Future of Twitter post from yesterday, let’s look at how Twitter might monetize a partnership with a big company. Take the Starbucks example. Let’s assume that there are 20,000 people on Twitter who have added Starbucks as a Friend in order to get a few promotions a week - e.g. a free cookie with your coffee, a free tall coffee, etc. If Twitter charged Starbucks a few cents per tweet per follower, the revenue from Starbucks might looks something like this:
20,000 followers
10 tweets (promotions) per week
$.05 cents per tweet for each follower (maybe more???)
that’s $10 K per week or about $40K per month
If you sign up 100-200 companies doing something similar then we’re talking some real revenue. Probably more than enough to offset those international SMS fees.
links for 2007-03-22
March 22nd, 2007 ·
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“…we can easily recommend it for people who are yearning for a simple way to show on their big TVs all that stuff trapped on their computers”
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A video review og Apple TV by Walt Mossberg
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Apple TV in the wild
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Bay Area earthquake alerts on Twitter
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Hilarious.
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“Hear how RedFin’s CEO and CTO want to shake up real estate world.”
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“…it’s an organized mess. It’s a mess I made, and I know where everything is.”
Tags: Daily Links
The Future of Twitter?
March 21st, 2007 · 8 Comments
Last night I listened to an interview that net@nite did with Twitter founder Evan Williams from earlier this month. Towards the end of the interview he talked about ways that they might monetize the Twitter platform in the future. The example that he gave was a movie promotion where you could follow the “tweets” of a character in an upcoming movie. This got me to thinking about where Twitter is going. I’m not saying I’m agreeing with the commercialization of Twitter, but how much longer will be it be until your Twitter page looks something like this?
5/29/2007 Update:
Delta Airlines is on Twitter now. Details about this on Jaunted.
6/4/2007 Update:
Read/Write Web spotted Amazon.com on Twitter.
7/13/2007 Update:
JetBlue (one of the companies that I used as an example in my original post) is on Twitter now.
Tags: Predictions · Twitter · Web 2.0
links for 2007-03-21
March 21st, 2007 ·
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Om Malike on the overuse of the Web 2.0 term
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Kottke on Twitter: “Twitter is the first thing on the web that I’ve been excited about in ages. Like years.”
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Digg-style SalesForce.com web site for collecting and prioritizing product enhancements
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Handy search tool for Twitter. Also a good way to measure real-time buzz. Just type in a phrase - e.g. the name of a television show - and see who’s talking about it right now.
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A pretty good interview with Ev Williams, founder of Twitter. This was from a few weeks ago, before the SXSW conference.
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Type in your location - e.g. L: San Francisco - and see who is Twittering nearby
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It responds to music, ambient noise, etc.
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“The question is…whether this newfound emphasis on productivity is helping—or just making us crazier.”
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Tim Cook (Apple COO) fields questions about Apple, iPhone and more.
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“Get your images where you want them to be, on the web with a single click or drag and drop to any application.”
Tags: Daily Links
links for 2007-03-20
March 20th, 2007 ·
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Public Alpha is available
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Includes a good list of Twitter apps
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Plugin for Wordpress
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Who has the most friends?
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Nicholas Carr weighs in on Twitter: “Being online means being alone, and being in an online community means being alone together.”
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Hmmmmmm.
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(via Scoble) New music discovery service. They need to change the name.
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Another music discovery service
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This is a pretty ambitous project.
Tags: Daily Links
