"Hey 'follow me' doesn't really mean you have to follow me everywhere."
When is the best time sell a tech company?
When the buzz is high and revenue is non-existent, thus making quarter-over-quarter revenue comparisons impossible.
Twitter is there.
Perfect time to sell Twitter.
The buzz will never be higher and all the A Listers haven't come to realize that the emperor has no clothes.
Perfect time to sell Twitter.
Twitter isn't social.
Despite Twitter being lumped in with Facebook and MySpace and blogs as part of the social network, Twitter isn't social.
Having "the conversation" the A Listers refer to is impossible.
Skeptical? Try engaging someone in a hot (or even luke-warm) hashtag driven dialogue. By the time a tweet is posted, a message arrives that indicates there are 47 more results. Read those and 47 more results pile in.
Hardly a conversation, unless you think the Chicago Board of Trade trading floor is a conversation.
Setting aside the hashtag commotion, one could argue that users with smaller followings can more easily engage in a real conversation.
One could argue this, but it would be wrong. There's that pesky 140 character limit. (Unless you set aside Twitter etiquette and string a bunch of tweets together. In which case, why not send a text or email?)
Twitter is commercial.
The A Listers use Twitter to promote themselves, their books, their webinars, etc. etc. Unless you are another A Lister, they don't care how or if you respond. But, they love those re-tweets. Twitter has spam. Just recently Twitter followers declined because Twitter purged some blantant spammers from their database.
But if an A Lister tweets about their speaking engagement at a conference, this is also spammy to most followers. When A Listers tweet a dozen times a day, it's impossible to read all their links (and the links contained in the blog to which they linked.)
Twitter is a bunch of 140 character spammy messages.
Seth Godin, bestselling author of more than seven books about marketing doesn't even think Twitter is a way for an A Lister (as he is) to communicate.
My reasoning is simple, and it has two parts. First, I don't want to use a tool unless I'm going to use it really well. Doing any of these things halfway is worse than not at all. People don't want a mediocre interaction. Second, I don't want to add a layer of staff between me and the tools I use and the people I interact with. I think both of these ideas go together, and unfortunately, they're also a paradox. If you want to be in multiple social media and also have a day job, you're going to need a staff. Scoble is the poster child for being everywhere, all the time, but it's all he does.
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Facebook is better.
Remember MySpace.com? Before Facebook? It was where the coolness was. MySpace was so cool is was hot. It sold for $580 million. Rupert Murdoch said in 2006 that MySpace could be sold for $6 Billion. Others estimated the value as high as $20 Billion. Those estimates were based on what Google and Facebook were worth.
I'll leave the valuation and wiseness of Murdoch's decision to buy MySpace to others more qualified.
One thing is for sure. MySpace users and traffic is declining while Facebook users and traffic is skyrocketing.
Via Quantcast:
#4 Facebook.com 91M+ U.S. monthly people. The site appeals to a more affluent, teen and young adult, very slightly female biased following
#9 MySpace.com 63M+ U.S. monthly people. The site is popular among a slightly female slanted, teen and young adult audience.
Facebook now has it's sights set on grabbing Twitter-like traffic. Facebook is offering streaming of Friend activities. Facebook is easier to filter.
And just like when Facebook took on MySpace, they are doing it better. A Twitter user has to depend on application developers to support adding more text, pictures and video. At some point, Twitter has to start buying those developers apps or make their own.
Mid-level users of Twitter (those with 300-500 followers) have a lot of chaff among their followers. Apps have been developed that will auto-follow a user. There is a prestige factor of having many followers, just like having many friends on Facebook. But eventually users will decide to cull followers from their Twitter account, just like they did Friends from their Facebook account.
And then the buzz will be that Twitter is dying.
Not a good time to sell.
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Biz Stone: while you have your house for sale, why not put Twitter on the market too?
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