As you can tell from my blog, I am a big sports fan and very involved in social media. I’ve blogged about Twitter and Athletes on severaloccasions before and continue to enjoy the ‘unfiltered’ access we get to our favorite sports icons. Today, while doing some research for a Tweetshop I am co-hosting for the Portland Chapter of the AMA, I came across a very interesting video on ESPN.com discussing Twitter and Athletes. It’s worth the 8 minutes to watch it in it’s entirety – you’ll discover all is not what it appears to be on Twitter with your favorite athlete.
This is a hot topic on Twitter today…breaking down the age group demographic of the most active participants on the micro-blogging service. Nielsen released their findings last week on their site and you can see from the chart below that the age range most likely to be using Twitter is the 24-54 year old demo. What’s interesting (and I mention this same data several months ago) is that the 55+ demo outpaces the % of Teen users as well. Does Twitter have a solution to reach what most companies consider their most valuable age audience? Time will tell – but so far, the answer is no.
I’m a fan of HBO’s Entourage. While it’s not theatrical genius – it’s a good way to while away 30 minutes on Sunday night laughing at things that will likely never happen to me….or anyone like me, anytime soon (I guess I’m admitting that I’ll never be a movie star). Why am I discussing Entourage in my blog you ask? Well – I was at the Internet Strategy Forum in PDX yesterday and in particular, listening to Jeremiah Owyang’s discussion about the Future of the Social Web. He had a great quote regarding mobile devices and the social community, which I tweeted:
No hash tag related to Entourage or it’s fictional movie star, Vinny Chase and no url linking to the show itself. Simply ‘entourage’ and ‘Vinny Chase’ in the string in my tweet. Not 30 seconds later, I get an email in my inbox stating: ‘Ari Gold is now following you on Twitter‘.
A follower that’s relevant to MY entourage? Probably not – after looking at the Ari Gold profile and the subsequent website associated with that profile. However, pretty powerful to see an almost immediate reaction to a very innocuous and tongue in cheek Tweet – the power of the social web.
The hot social trend for the first half of 2009 has been undeniably, Twitter. Everywhere you look brands, personalities, heck even your grandparents have some sort of relationship with the micro blogging tool. The usage growth of Twitter has been well documented in my blog and in many blogs more interesting than mine over the last 6 months. This month, we see that growth slow for the first time in a 12 month cycle. Granted, Twitter enjoyed a phenomenal spike over the last quarter and will continue to grow – but will it see another burst that we saw between February and May of this year, visible in the graph below? I think so – especially if we continue to find innovative ways to use this form of communication. Steve Johnson has a fascinating article in Time that details the effect of Twitter on our every day life and the potential for it to drastically change the way we live. Clive Thomas is quoted in the article as saying Twitter provides us with ‘ambient awareness‘ of our social and physical networks. It’s that ambient awareness that keeps us hungering for more…
As we’ve seen this year, Twitter adoption and usage is exploding. The site and tool is outpacing major news publications in unique visitors on a monthly basis and every day a new usage model or add on is coming to market to take advantage of the fervent growth of this micro-blogging service. Tools and add-ons around a service are great – however the real value is in your followers. Chromatic published a ‘Top 10″ report on how to “Keep Your Precious Followers on Twitter”. Very useful and spot on. Here is the summary list, visit their site for more comprehensive details.
1. Be Consistent with your Tweets
2. Quality is Greater than Quantity
3. Separate Accounts for Personal/Family and Professional/Business
4. If Posting Links, Provide Commentary
5. Balance Self Promotion with Sharing
6. Maintain Good Twitter Etiquette
7. Avoid Controversial Topics
8. Interact with your Followers
9. Direct Message Etiquette
10. Try to Tweet on a Daily Basis
I, being in my nascent stages of Twitter usage, apparently have very little Twitter Cred…but get some love on Google – see my results. What I find baffling is that neither service does a good job of selecting ‘portions’ of the search term. For example – search ‘Veneski’ vs. ‘dveneski’ vs. ‘David Veneski’ and you get vastly different results. Logical or did I just ‘mis-brand’ myself on Twitter?
You can quickly see how you rate through a service call Twoogle. Since there is a big debate these days about Twitter Search being more ‘real time’ relevant than the results through Google, this is a pretty interesting side by side comparison of the search capabilities of each medium.
From Compete. Hmmm…Free, constantly updated with “See what’s happening — right now“, and portable. How could it not? Continuation from my previous post that only included NYTimes.
He may not be the greatest actor in the universe, but Demi’s husband knows how to promote himself in cyberspace. Head to Head with one of the largest media outlets in the world – he comes out on top. And for a good cause. CNET summed up the ‘man against the media machine’ in this way:
“To be sure, the mixing of media is nothing new. But to me, and I’m certain many others who were watching the action live, there was something surreal about witnessing the urgency being expressed by both the guy in his living room and the guy on the professional news set, both being able to speak to theoretically unlimited numbers of people (well maybe not unlimited, but you know what I mean) and both standing tall for their medium.”
Well done @aplusk…you didn’t even have to ‘aquire‘ an account to get you in the race!
“Literally out of nowhere, the little micro-blogging platform that constrains your messaging to 140 characters or less, is, according to Compete.com, this very month passing the august NYTimes.com, as measured by numbers of unique visitors.”
“….that little bird is fluttering right past The Times on the web’s list of top sites, and you might say, leaving the old business modelers wondering, “What exactly was that thing that just blew by us, anyway?A bird, a plane, or…”
Full article @ BNET. comScore charts growth in an age group you wouldn’t expect.
Twitter Search tagline: “See what’s happening — right now“. Sprint commercial tagline: “This is what’s happening now. Sprint, The Now Network“. (*click the link and you will find the world’s busiest widget – wow). I found this on the new Sprint commercial featuring the Palm Pre smartphone. What was most interesting to me was the incorporation of Twitter into their commercial – not just a callout, but a full blown incorporation of the ‘Twitter birds’ flying around the spot. From my recollection – this is the first time I’ve seen Twitter incorporated in a commercial, visually. I’m sure it won’t be the last.
