Harvard, Twitter and the Pareto Principle
A Harvard Business School study, as reported by Reuters, raises a serious question on the value of Twitter for businesses. Relying upon research by Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, results show greater than 50% of Twitter users will tweet less than one time every ten to eleven weeks. Along with that, many have witnessed Twitter struggling to keep their system running, due to an overload of tweets, apparently by 10% of all Twitter users; who are responsible for blasting out 90% of all tweets. What an interesting twist on the Pareto principle.
Fail Whale says Twitter is Over Capacity
Notwithstanding there are some companies utilizing the social value of Twitter, one would have to question whether or not tweeting holds much value for smaller companies. The Harvard study seems to indicate that of all Twitter users they will tweet on average only once during their Twitter lifetime. Read more
Twitter Traffic Machine: Social Media Amway?
What’s up with the Twitter Traffic Machine? I watched the video of the two guys hawking this program. It starts out … two guys in a basement … sounds a lot like the start of the Amway story. (Okay, maybe it’s a sub-level apartment … I don’t know) If you haven’t seen it, picture a video version of the famous keep-on-scrolling, I’ve got more promises and testimonials sales letter pages that guarantee you will make a bundle or your money back. (except there are only two or three testimonials) Unfortunately, there are no Ginsu knives or PoPeet containers if you act now, but wait, the hype is not to that level. Read more
Dial 9999 to Vote: New Digg at Ad Rates
Sounds almost like American Idol … the new experimental advertising system that some people are Digging. Although I cannot claim to have been watching American Idol, I heard this last season that an abuse of popularity voting may have skewed the outcome of that popularity contest.
Personally, I think voting on ads is great; in the right context. In fact, I used to love to watch the ads on the now defunct firebrand.com site. People could vote on ads there, too. However, do you think that voting on an ads popularity should be the criteria for how much the advertiser pays for that ad? On the surface, it sounds like it might be great … if you think the same way as a specific group of like-minded people. I see a lot of room for abuse by large corporations and organizations that have the ability to pump up the vote and blow out the little guy who is trying to get started and does not have a base of followers to cosign his or her ads.
Content and relativity are fair and equitable ways to help gauge ad pricing, more so than popularity. If an ad gets thousands of votes, then most likely they are going to generate a lot more revenue. Should they pay less or pay more? In time there is the potential that everyone gets hurt, because the online markets would be dominated only by large groups that have huge fan bases; potentially curbing new ideas, products and innovations. If the small fry that is trying to compete with the mega-popular ads is charged a higher rate for his or her ads, then the likelihood is that they will look for other more effective ways to advertise; abandoning social networks and online marketing and potentially closing their doors. I believe a serious caveat of the vote pricing model is that it has the potential of driving away competition … and without competition you have huge monolithic organizations that control what you have access to and minimizing your choices.
1_03.gif)
2_03.gif)
Tag Cloud
