Will Twitter Roll Out an Advertising Platform?

Twitter’s long-awaited advertising platform was the subject of much speculation among bloggers on Tuesday. Twitter will roll out an official advertising platform, likely within the next month or so, one of the company’s executives told an advertising-industry conference, according to a report in Media Post.

Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost ...that "we are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase." When asked how it would work, Banerji says it will be "explicitly clear that a sponsor paid for the ad," and it will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad."

As reported on tuesday, the company says they receive and distribute about 50 million tweets a day,, or about 600 Tweets every second, reaching a popularity almost as high as Facebook. With that kind of growth, it makes sense that the company would want to take advantage of that user base and provide advertisers with a way to reach and target them. What remains to be seen is how the service implements ads, and whether or not users revolt against the commercialization of their social network.

Social Media Resolutions For 2010

A Guide on How to Create a Better Social Media Presence in 2010!

Social media is a vast field and comes with a plethora of issues to follow. Since 2010 is right around the corner, and you must be planning a new strategy for your social media marketing.

You can plan your resolutions in the social media style. The list to choose among the issues is endless, but here is a list of most important items to work on in social media in 2010. However, there is no immaculate answer in social media; each company is different, but each of these points can be adjusted for any company. It can also work as a guide on how to create a better social media presence in 2010!


1. Spend more on customer service : - So many problems could be diffused easily if companies would simply treat customers as they should. In today’s social life activities, word of mouth travels far and can truly influence users across the globe. By offering your products with excellent support and a pleasant experience, you will create brand advocates that will help you in case of emergency also.

2. Make a better effort to track conversation : - One of the toughest aspects of Social Media Marketing is tracking the conversations that are occurring in the market. Research and look out for a solution that will help you and your company achieve your social media targets. There are a number of good tracking systems on the market, the trick is to test drive them and see what will work for you. In addition to tracking mentions, tracking broad keywords and engaging customer who are looking for help can be a very profitable portion of your social media marketing campaign. When looking for tools, those that allow the archiving and exportation of data is something that can be a big help as you make your internal cause for social media.

3. Act proactive and work to protect your brand names : - Stop name squatters and others from hijacking your brand name and your trademarked term. Services like KnowEm allow you to reserve user names across hundreds of sites and prevent those from stealing your brand. Taking a few minutes and a few dollars now can save you a lot of time and money to get it back later, so get out there and protect your brand.

4. Create intelligible social media strategies & social media policies : - Most of the companies don't consider this as important than their other work and there is a lack of social media strategy and they are engaging because they think they have to. Sit down and put together a list of goals then work to find a strategy that will work to accomplish them. Don’t just Tweet or make a Facebook page because your competitor did. Come up with a list of goals and a strategy to be accomplished. Tactics and strategies are crucial in social media.

5. Provide Training & education to the workers : - Policies should be set forth to ensure that workers are not breaking terms of use, acting inappropriately or providing inaccurate information. As recently, there have been some social media meltdowns based on the lack of knowledge of some individuals acting on behalf of a company. In addition, anyone who is allowed to speak on behalf of the company should have extreme comprehension of the networks, how they work and the overall company strategy. When executed poorly, social media has the power to severely harm a brand, and providing training and education is the fundamental factor that can prevent these problems.

6. Reward loyal fans with exclusives : - By offering the customers items that are exclusive to them, you can “demonstrate value” and make them feel good about following you. Not only would they get an exclusive deal/song/download/game, they also get the feeling that they are getting a special connection that not everyone has.

This all about the important tips or you can say resolutions that you can try to work on in 2010 and watch your social presence flourish. Happy Holidays!

Social Media Revolution

Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the industrial revolution? Welcome to the revolution.

By 2010, Gen Y will outnumber baby boomers. 96% of them have joined a social network. Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web. 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met via social media.

Years to reach 50 million users:

* Radio: 38 years
* TV: 13 years
* Internet: 4 years
* iPod: 3 years
* Facebook: Added 100 million users in less than 9 months
* iPod applications: Downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months

If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest.

1. China
2. India
3. United States
4. Facebook
5. Indonesia
6. Brazil
7. Pakistan
8. Bangladesh

Yet, China’s QZone is larger than Facebook with more than 300 million people using their services.

A 2009 study by the US Department of Education revealed that on average, online students outperformed those receiving face-to-face instruction. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in an online curriculum.

80% of companies are using LinkedIN as their primary tool to find employees. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.

Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway, and Panama. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences.

Generation Y and Z consider email passé. In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshmen.

Full Story :- http://itpromarketer.com/2009/11/social-media-revolution/

Nokia Acquires Plum Assets

Espoo, Finland-headquartered Nokia Inc has announced the acquisition of certain assets of Plum Ventures, Inc. These assets will help complement Nokia’s Social Location services.

Plum Ventures Inc is a privately-held company headquartered in San Francisco, with another office in Boston, Massachusetts. The company has funding from Vulcan Capital and Levensohn Venture Partners, whose representatives are on its board of directors. The company is in the business of developing cloud-based social media sharing and messaging service for private groups. The company’s products enable websites to install community-oriented pages where visitors can stay connected with each other by sharing and discussing content from the site, the greater web or their on computers, without leaving the site. In the long run helps visitors to turn into engaged, active users.

Plum’s platform has features such as Group builder, which adds the social hub to the site that can be customized; a topical directory that can be created by the site owner and the visitors, a widgets library that allows group activity to be displayed throughout the site, and also integrates user accounts into one single sign-in. Some of these features will be made us of by Nokia in its own services.

Plum Ventures was cofounded by Hans Peter Brondmo and Margaret Olson. The company is presently manned by about 10 employees.

Source:http://pcs.co.uk/2009/09/nokia-acquires-plum-assets/

Benefits and Trends of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the most effective marketing techniques available today. It is the practice of creating quality content related to your website or business and promoting it through social media channels. Attaining a fan following through social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube can generate massive amounts of traffic, much of it more relevant than what you'd get through typical banner advertising.

Many people are still wondering exactly how to benefit from the new networking possibilities. Here is a list of some of the biggest benefits that come from a successful social media marketing campaign .

Generating a strong base

Fabricating a strong, core base of supporters is essential to expand and grow, and creating compelling social media content is one of the best ways to do this. A loyal fan following assure that you will always have a market ready to buy what you have to offer, and if your offerings are good, it will ultimately add to your goodwill.

Brand Awareness

It adds in enhancing your brand's awareness. As more people watch your business name and the link to your site, your logo, and other details found in social media profiles, you establish more brand awareness among your potential client base.

Featuring High Quality Sites That Engage and Persuade

Always remember content is the only dominating factor, and has the ability to glued the casual onlookers to your point of view. Sites such as Xanga, Friendster, Bebo, Flickr and imeem are just a few that provide a well-formatted presentation to your following. This effect only serves to enhance the predominant message or image conveyed.

Improved Conversion Rates

The conversion rates comprises of the website visitor percentage that turn into leads and then customers. This concept is also known as sales funnel in which there are multiple stages through which prospects progress over time. Social media can improve this rates by allowing prospects to know, like and trust you more than in years past.

Affordable Method Of Globalizing Your Business

SMm helps business owners in making their products affordable and the company name visible to the global market. In return, they get clients in large number from the same forum and through the reference of the former. Henceforth, you are making friends and extracting cash from similar location at the same time.

The Social Media is not a destination but consider it as a tool in an integrated marketing plan which connects like-minded people. Your community will naturally grow given you provide quality content that engenders passion and loyalty to those relationships.

Are You Twittering Yet?

Social media has become a popular medium nowadays. Not only is it a source of entertainment for most people, it is also the newest strategy for acquiring customers for businesses. And with hot new tools like Twitter, social media marketing has only become more progressive and popular!

Twitter is a free online social networking and micro-blogging application which gives its users the ability to send updates (up to 140 characters) called “tweets” to people who are following them on Twitter in their profile. The users, who have subscribed to tweets, are known as followers. Senders can restrict or allow anybody to access tweets. So what you have here is a publishing tool that can be either public or private. Users can send and receive tweets through different mediums like IM, cell phones and the web or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but for SMS, service providers may charge fees.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and business associates to communicate and exchange anything on twitter without any boundaries. In Twitter, even the most ordinary updates about your life can be pretty exciting. If used correctly and efficiently twitter is a great marketing tool from business perspective. Send out a tweet like "Have some breaking news you want to get out quickly?” Update your blog or web site and lets other aware about it instantly with a Tweet. You can promote your projects, books, movies, or whatever by offering a free download or showing a preview? Send out a Tweet with a URL to the free download.

Moreover twitter offers a great functionality which connects your blog and a Twitter Page through RSS feed of the blog. This functionality is known as "Twitter Feed". With the help of this, your Twitter page gets updated each time you add new content to your blog.

Much like how blogging has become a staple for today’s society, Twitter and “twittering” is on the same path to becoming ingrained in today’s culture despite only being around for less than two years. So simple in its execution yet powerful in the marketing opportunities, it offers ease of use. Twitter is one of the top web technologies to gain worldwide prominence.

Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.