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Twitter With a Twist
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For much of the past year, a favorite Silicon Valley parlor game has been hypothesizing on Twitter's ad model. None have emerged, but that hasn't stopped brands from reaping the rewards of Twitter's growing popularity in other, surprising ways.
Brands are going beyond early Twitter efforts focused on customer service, buzz monitoring and contests, to embrace Twitter in its emerging role as a key part of the Internet infrastructure. They use it as a default content-syndication channel, pop-culture icon and real-time content source. What's more, Twitter's decision to open its application programming interface (API) has allowed brands to weave Twitter into campaigns, rather than have stand-alone Twitter strategies.
One of the most essential functions Twitter serves is as a real-time source of consumer-to-consumer recommendations. Twitter acknowledged this last November when it changed its prompt from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" For brands, this means Twitter has become a key content-sharing option. Some banner ads, for example, now have a "retweet" button.
Twitter serves a content-sharing role for an initiative Sapient Interactive kicked off for Coca-Cola tied to the World Cup. On its site, Sapient built widgets of information designed for sharing and Twitter lets consumers pass it around. "The real-time aspect is the most interesting," said Freddie Laker, director of digital strategy at Sapient.
Twitter has been discussed so much that the Global Language Monitor named it 2009 word of the year. New England Confectionery Co. is capitalizing on the zeitgeist with a Valentine's Day campaign that will use "Tweet me" on its Sweethearts candies. It also has iPhone and Web apps for users to Tweet Sweethearts' messages to friends. "Marketers had been gravitating towards Facebook, but people are realizing it's a very cluttered space," said Chris Pape, cd at Genuine Interactive.
Other marketers using Twitter in a unique way include Tasti D-Lite, which has made it the backbone of a customer loyalty program. It lets users earn extra reward points for broadcasting their purchasing activity on Twitter and mobile social network Foursquare. "People were already talking about Tasti D-Lite on these networks," said B.J. Emerson, director of information and social technologies at Tasti D-Lite.
Twitter skeptics point to a stagnant, if not declining, traffic rate. According to Nielsen, Twitter.com received 18.1 million visitors last month, a 579 percent increase from a year earlier, but a 5 percent decrease from November. That doesn't, however, take into account the many tweeters using third-party tools to update and read tweets.
