so my twitter account has been down for about a week now, after some issues with twitter.search caused me to disable my account.
i can't restore it because my registered e-mail is invalid. i may not be able to get my 1,500 followers back or have access to my carefully-crafted voice, etc.
after swearing at the computer a bit, laughing at twitter's automated e-mail responses, and otherwise killing time on the weekend, my annoyance led me to think about whether or not the channel is useful, whether it's a "flash in the pan," etc.
as much as it currently bothers me, i've decided that twitter is pretty functional (i know, groundbreaking insight, right?). in spite of its infancy, it has extreme value as the evolution of marketing and journalism. brands, celebrities, politicians, etc. communicate directly to the consumer. there is no third party editorializing, zero filter, and nothing to stop an individual from communicating with his or her chosen personality.
my only fear for twitter is that they are furthering the perception of modernity that things on the internet should be free.
hosting isn't free.
tech development isn't free.
legal consult isn't free.
so why wouldn't you expect to pay for a service like this? to top it off, the minute a site tries to monetize by including advertisements, its users complain that the site has "sold out," and that "the man is wrecking their internet lives."
get over it.
if the advertising is respectful, if it provides value to you (the consumer), and if it is targeted to start conversations that you personally might find interesting or insightful, then you have nothing to complain about.
either put up, or shut up.
cause this sh*t ain't free, homie...
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3 comments:
This is Millsy checking in. Here are my two cents.
I understand what you're saying Furth in terms of the overhead costs of providing services like Twitter, Facebook, blogspot etc. If someone or some company has come up with an application or service that is really popular, useful, original, and perhaps even revolutionary, why shouldn't we pay for it? Simple: being free (with unintrusive ads) is just as much a part of the identity of these services as is the ability to tweet.
Let me go back to the old analogy of the internet being "the information super highway." If bridges, tunnels, and highways decided to generate revenue through roadside billboards instead of tolls, we would think government officials had lost their minds. Of course we would, because they have a monopoly on transportation that we know if we want to get to work in the morning, we'd pay the toll regardless. Well, the internet doesn't have that luxury. There are a million of toll-less 'roads' without billboards that are on some minority report type shit. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, blogspot, etc. are roads that have a lot of traffic at the moment. However, they lose their allure and grandeur once you slap a toll booth on it, or add some billboards that will talk to you and know your name.
Now it could be tempting to look at Twitter (who has yet to be able to monetize) and apply the put up or shut up logic, but Twitters biggest fear is that if that were the case, most people would shut up, and move on to the next thing. Sure its useful, hip, gaining speed, but not enough where people would spend dough for a username. And in terms of ads, Twitter's model simply doesn't have a great platform for ad revenue. Some of the top media analysts in the world have said that the strategy for Twitter is "simply get people so addicted to the service that they might eventually pay fees." Really? Are we selling crack in the 80s again? It's a hustler's mentality, I'll give them that, but when you $55 million in the hole you have to come up with something better than trying to turn tweeters into fiends.
I think the problem is that companies are nostalgic for the dot-com bubble days. But instead of them complaining that internet users are cheap, fickle and unloyal to services, adapt tot he time and the culture. AOL.com almost went under because they were one of the last companies still trying to charge people for a Goddamn e-mail address. Meanwhile, Google is trying to provide free Wi-Fi to entire cities on the West Coast (and still doing numbers).
we need to remember that this is America people. If something isn't making money, I'm going to question the strength of the product or service before I look at the weakness of the users.
word. i agree with your assessment of twitter's business identity, and i'm not suggesting they change at all.
what i was doing, though, was identifying the fact that the internet is this "magical free domain" - and it's not going to last that way.
granted, you won't be asked to "put up" in a traditional sense (paying for service, etc.), but brand involvement in content is going to start being very important.
imagine if something innovative like facebook was started by procter & gamble or kraft? there would have to be virtually no brand-association publicly (think chipotle being owned by mcdonalds), but it's gonna start happening in games, applications, and content.
prepare yourself haha.
I was thinking about this whole 'monetizing social media' issue when I was running this morning and can't help but throw in some random thoughts as well.
Q's take:
While fb and twitter have the most valuable assets in the digital world (all of our eyeballs staring at their sites for extended periods of time) there really isn't much they could do to monetize it without diluting the value of their service with a more commercial presence and pissing everyone off.
If I were them I'd keep the services free for several more years. Keep adding features and building users in the younger generations and the slow-adopting baby boomers (go ahead and fb friend my Dad and 2 Aunts who started accounts within the past year).
I'd just be patient (and accept non-controlling stake investments here and there when necessary) and wait for Twitter and FB to become ingrained in the lifestyles of multiple generations as they acclimate themselves to the digital era.
Once this time comes, I would start putting tolls on this 'information super highway'. Charge all users some small monthly/yearly fee- like $1 or something- in order to continue using their services. Make it so they enter their info to pay it once, and never think about it again. The number of users will be growing exponentially over the next decade and these services will be utilized in more and more aspects of life. Granted, some of the users will not pay, but these are the ones who don't use the services habitually anyway.
Call it a hustler's mentality, but that's the only way social media will be able to monetize itself while maintaining the integrity of the service and user experience that made it so popular in the first place.
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