Can you purchase conversation?

So Nuffnang's launched a new service called - appropriately - ChurpChurp. The proposition is simple: create a way for advertisers to easily propogate "word-of-mouth" campaigns whilst allowing top tweeters (not twitterers ok?) to make a pretty penny. But the question is: "will it work?"

I'm not the first to analyse this (heavy work day and all), so you should check out these posts by Shaolintiger's and Bytebot's for additional viewpoints. What I'm really interested in is the dynamic of introducing in-stream advertising into a medium such as Twitter.

Advertising on the web isn't new and it isn't bad. Websites and blogs cost money to host. And let's face it, a good blogger deserves to make some money from his content. But I've always maintained that there's a right way to advertise and then there's the wrong way. Google's probably the best example: Adsense is genius! And Nuffnang themselves are quite the revelation in our Malaysian market (You'll notice the Nuffnang banner ad at the top of my blog.)

But banner advertising, large-rectangle advertising, text advertising have always been tolerable because they are clear and distinct from the actual content of the blog / website. And the best kind are non-intrusive - large enough that you'll notice it, but small enough that you aren't irritated by it.

Then there's the other kind of advertising. Paid for advertorials, not unlike the kind you'd find in print. The modus operandi is simple: the blogger is paid a certain sum for writing an article. And the article is added to the site's content stream (blogposts, stories whatever). Properly disclosed, the occasional advertorial can be informative, and even useful. But here's the twist: Twitter isn't a blog.

Imagine: if half your friends whom you've been having awesome conversations with on Twitter suddenly joined ChurpChurp. Then suddenly, an advertiser purchases an ad campaign where half of them get included in the automated tweet list. And your Twitter stream gets filled with 20 of the exact same tweet from 20 of your pals.

The ideal situation (for the company that paid for the ad, at least) is you get all excited about these "tweets" you're seeing and you go and do whatever the tweets tell you. Or start a conversation.

The reality, I suspect, is much uglier. You'll get irritated, annoyed by the in-flux of ads and seriously have your respect for the offending tweeter damaged.

"Just unfollow them!" I heard you say?

Well, I've thought about it. But I still love having conversations and being connected to those friends.

"Use another platform? What about Facebook?"

Well, those 20 friends don't often chat on Facebook. The action takes place on Twitter.

"Well, why don't you just tell them you don't like that their allowing in-stream advertising?"

That's probably the most sane approach. But as I hope you'll start to see, it isn't about to be so cut and dried. And if they simply refuse, well... it's become a tough decision for you.

How would you feel about the advertiser that got 20 of your friends to post tweets about their latest products or upcoming event? I doubt there'd be much positivity. Not only do those tweet-ads irritate you, they also push you to making the tough decision to follow/unfollow some of those people you may have been enjoying a great deal of interaction with. Which makes me really question the value of advertising thru these means.

If you're a brand that's looking to reach out, Twitter seems to be the perfect place to facilitate two-way conversation between brands and customers or other interested parties. It's a great place to get a great story (or a quirky one) spread around thru re-tweets too. But instead of just buying tweet-ads, these tactics call for investing into a long-term plan to maintain a company / brand presence on Twitter. Dell's a great success story. And locally, there's MAS, AirAsia and P1WiMax too.

Conversations can't be purchased. Getting 20, 100 or even 10,000 people to re-tweet your ad isn't going to generate the kind of good-will, interaction and stickiness (marketeers love this word) that creating your own free Twitter account and actually interacting with people will.

"Leaked betas", the new pre-launch marketing ploy?

I know of companies who've "leaked" classified documents, pictures and even videos on the net. Apparently, the new theory is that you can also "leak" a whole operating system to drive interest and market it.

Well, as far as marketing plans go, I think this might just work better than the US$300 million spent on Seinfeld ads.

Does Cristiano Ronaldo make you want to buy chips?

Just a random thought that struck me about sponsorships:



Does sticking Cristiano Ronaldo on the packaging of Mr. Potato chips make you want to buy the product more? Don't get me wrong, I love Mr. Potato chips and would buy them (on occassion) anyway, but I'm just wondering if printing football stars pictures on the packaging would actually make consumers more likely to buy the product? Or would it make you want to purchase a mobile phone plan even more?

This isn't a rant actually about Mr. Potato (I love their chips and buy them regardless of who's face is on the packaging) but just a musing about how sponsorships are quite, very rampant today. And that sometimes, in the rush to be associated with the latest and coolest, a lot of thinking on relevance gets left behind.

Then there's the audience. I'd like to think that the majority people still make sensible purchase decisions based on what they are getting for what they are paying instead of the mug that gets printed on the packaging.

Yes, sometimes, "special edition" items do get a higher emotional value rating like that red iPod a couple years back from U2, so there's actually a science to how sponsorships can make products worth more than the sum-total of its parts.

Still, I'd like to think consumers are getting more and more intelligent and the simple printed logo or character image doesn't mean as much as it used to.

What do you think? Would you be more likely to pay more for a bag of chips with your fave football star's picture on the packaging?

Obligatory Social Networking Prediction

This post is inspired by this story over at Rolling Stone.

In the past three years or so, there's been a real explosion on the internet by what we now call the Web 2.0 phenomenon or the "social networking" boom. If Web 1.0 was based around email and static home pages, then the introduction of blogs, social networks and content-sharing sites is what characterises Web 2.0. The internet has moved from being centred around information to people.

Let's turn Web 2.0 into a mathematical exercise: have a meagre 200 odd friends on Facebook, just over a hundred on Friendster and an empty Linked-in account I never use much. I have a blog that has ... oh, about 6 or so readers... and a Flickr account with 5 friends. I think there's an old Plaxo login I have somewhere and I'm member to more than a few web-forums around the internet. I've got an MSN list that tells me 32 of my 147 contacts are online now.

That's my imprint on the internet.

I'm sure there's way more people who have a far larger pool of fans (I once surfed a friend's page on Friendster who had actually reached the limit of 1,000 friends, so she had to create two new accounts to store new friends. Maybe coz she's oklah hot).

The point is, all this talk of Web 2.0 means the currency today is people. I hear internet marketing firms talking of calculating "reach" instead of traffic. "Audience" instead of hits. And I'm wondering out loud if in this age of ultra-networkability and -trackability, could we actually measure how influential a person is?

If yes, we could, just by using the internet, then Barack Obama (my candidate of choice, actually) would win hands down this next US election thanks to his more than 500 facebook supporter groups. But it isn't so simple, is it?

Influence is more thant the internet, and definitely more than the number of friends you have on your facebook account. You don't influence people by sending them "Vote for this cause" requests. They'll probably click it without batting an eyelash, or just click delete.

Clickety-click.

I now dread logging into Facebook and it's even spread so far that I dread logging into my Gmail. Because my Facebook thread is now filled with millions (I guess) of requests for inane Facebook apps and my Gmail gets filled too with Superwall messages and Funwall stuff. I have 79 undrunk drinks. t's not that I'm anti-social, mind you, but simply because there's overwhelming interactivity with people. I dread that the first 10 clicks I do when I log into Gmail is to delete BACN (stuff that's not spam (like Facebook auto-messages, but of little use anyway).

How long more can people still be into Social Networks, I wonder?

After some thinking, I think for a long, long, long more time. Whoever said human beings are social creatures was right - we want to feel valued, loved and paid attention. We want to have friends.

But, Social Networks will start to change (and indeed, they already are) simply because no one needs to be weighed down by 1,223 contacts pinging them with Fight Club challenges all the time.

Remember the Rolling Stones link right at the beginning of this post? That's what I think will be social networking in the future. The key word is Purpose.

Why? Because I don't care to be punching some elses zombies all day. I want to find a person because there's some relevance in that person to me: either he's a friend I met somewhere, or he likes the same miniatures I like or we both believe in Barack Obama. I want to connect with somebody for a purpose --> it's email when it's "Hey XXX, can we go for a drink sometime?" or it's a MSN ping when its "Hey, tonight wanna go and play Warhammer?"

Don't get me wrong, sometimes, just making a new friend or enjoying one another's company is purpose enough. That's why Facebook and Friendster are still going to be around. What I do feel though is we can do without the "too-many" - bite me (vampire) requests.

For social marketing and PR peeps: when Social networks grow to become purposeful, then the audience becomes real. Social networks don't just become a click-fest . Shapeable, identifiable, targetable, and logical networks will emerge. The social network will make more sense to marketeers than right now. Your ROI headache will go away.