The Tweet Sound of Success!

Prashanth Kumar, Director, Digital Strategies, Wunderman
Tweeting all the way to the bank may soon be a distinct possibility. If marketers are careful not to confuse the medium with the message! -- Prashanth Kumar

When the world’s richest and most influential media owner – Rupert Murdoch – makes a statement like “Be careful of investing here” regarding what has come to become the biggest buzz in social media circles in recent times – Twitter – it pays to take note. The mogul who four years ago paid $580 million for MySpace was categorical about not being interested in buying Twitter as it would be tough to justify making an investment in a company that has not yet come up with a sustainable way to make money. He was even more vehement about not selling struggling MySpace which recently laid-off more than 30 per cent of its global staff.

News sites, portals, bloggers and social media experts have been crying themselves hoarse about Twitter being the next best thing after sliced bread. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams might even have been the most popular person searched online if he hadn’t been eclipsed by the sad demise of Michael Jackson. Even after the onset of the downturn, in January 2009, the company was evaluated at a staggering $250 million. This was the same site that US National Security advisor Mark Pfeifle said should win the Nobel Peace Prize for its role during the civil unrest in Iran. This is the same site that has rapidly climbed up to 16th place in Alexa’s list of Top 100 sites in India. This is the same site that has become the next big target of scam artistes (always a good indication about its popularity/relevance). So why is there so much negativity about the ability of Twitter to create, develop and sustain a monetization model?

The lack of a definitive answer from the company could surely be a reason. But then, they could be playing their cards close to their chest. Google never mentioned its AdWords and AdSense models before they were all set to roll-out and gain the first mover advantage. Just because no one has figured out a fail-proof model is also no indications that there couldn’t be a killer app over the horizon. In a market where venture capitalists have all but disappeared, scores of them are still interested in funding Twitter. Third party application developers too are already making a killing by selling Twitter clients to anyone with a mobile device. That suggests there is potential explicitly manifest from the above facts. What remains to be seen is what shape it finally takes.

In this article, I present my views on what Twitter could/should do to capitalize on the phenomenal buzz it has been creating. A few are very obvious, others less so. Almost all have been discussed and dissected all over the web. My attempt is to look at the monetization from an Indian market perspective and (hopefully) predict what we all could soon witness.

Real-time updates: the Twitter Strength

The basic premise of Twitter is ‘What are you doing?’ This single question can offer a wealth of information for trend trackers. Take Daniela Riccio from Singapore for instance. Using the handle @glamourpusslife (for women, by women), she tracks and collates real world shopping specials, discount sales and offers throughout Singapore. Her network of 308 followers helps by being her eyes and ears on the ground. The result is a (nearly) real-time update on the latest and the best offers/bargains and discounts for women in stores in and around Singapore.

Although there is no apparent revenue model yet, the day is not far when, after having reached critical mass and a dedicated follower base, Daniela could interest stores by enabling some form of display advertising or referral commission. Easier still to implement would be exclusive Twitter discounts to followers of the @glamourpusslife updates.

Somewhere down the line things could also go the performance marketing (lead generation, percentage of sale) way. The options are only limited to one’s imagination. For the Indian market, one could adopt the very same model. Retail is already a biggie here and a discount/offer update account is not far. (Hopefully, the Future Group and Reliance are listening!) Aggregator and comparison sites (across verticals) like ApnaPaisa, NaapTol, iXiGo, Compare India among others could use this new channel really well.

Mobile Twitter: Giving Twitter breadth and reach

For a country that adds over 10 million new mobile users every month, India is indeed a mobile economy. When positioned against the internet penetration that is much lower (currently, pegged at 81 million) it is very clear that the ubiquitous mobile will drive even web usage patterns. Now, Twitter lends itself beautifully to the mobile platform. The 140 character limit and the plentiful availability of third party applications (TweetDeck, TinyTwitter, Twitterberry etc) have made it a powerful means of accessing and updating tweets. In some ways, Twitter has almost become (and is increasingly being used as) a mobile, instant messaging service.

If this unmatched reach needs to be capitalized upon, only one thing is required – integration with some sort of payment gateway. The concept is not new. Several mobile payment platforms like MCheck, MobiPay etc already exist. What Twitter can do is to liberate them from their Phone OS/Service Provider dependency and take them to the internet. One way of doing this effortlessly is to integrate a mobile wallet type application with Twitter, so users can make purchases online.

The other option is to provide users with the ability to add a credit card and address details to their Twitter account and use a set of predefined, 140 character instructions to process the payments. Pretty much like what happens currently with voting for reality shows. @[brandname] #[Product Code] [Quantity] or something on those lines. A third option is to explore the possibility of making Twitter the mobile version of something like PayPal. Pre-paid currency in set limits can be accessed to pay for products sold/offered through Twitter channels.

All of these options will necessitate the creation and development of an entire ecosystem revolving around third party application development, credit/debit card transactions and fulfilment. However, once that is done, Twitter will be on speed mode and there will be no stopping it!

Ego Boost: Separating celebrities from the hoi polloi

Bollywood already has quite a few stars on Twitter and Gul Panag (@GulPanag) seems to be the most active of them all. They too could use this as an option to keep in touch with their fans, update followers on their latest films and in short, offer a peek into their exclusive real/reel lives. When they do go the merchandising way, Twitter will prove invaluable.

Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) is already making waves as ‘Minister Twitter’ and the day is not far when other politicians too could harness the power of the medium to connect with their constituents. Doyens of other industries too could ride on the power of Twitter to establish and promote their thought leadership, disseminate information about their brands and to offer readily-available sound bites to quote-hungry newspapers and journals. ExecTweets.com, which runs on a similar premise, is already officially endorsed by Twitter and there is no reason why an Indian version should not appear soon.

Currently, Twitter offers such accounts (by celebrities or public figures) a paid option of verification. A small, ‘Verified’ tag appears below the name distinguishing the account from imitation or squatter accounts. The verification process could also extend to corporations and businesses in order to distinguish the official accounts from others. Verified accounts can also help subsidize free accounts bringing ‘freemiums’ into the equation. Additional functionalities like temporarily muting certain followers or the ability to broadcast tweets to sub-groups within followers could make this offer more compelling. Essentially, this will convert regular Twitter accounts into ‘power accounts’. This can contribute to monetization, although it is unlikely to be the main stay.

Keyword Advertising – The Twitter way

Another way of going about monetizing Twitter is to concentrate on its key strength – keywords. Given its succinct format, each and every word will prove to be a keyword goldmine. Imagine if Twitter were to compile a list of all users who tweeted about your brand and offered this to you. You could then:
1. Pay twitter to make all mentions of your brand (product/service/trademark) an auto link to your web presence and
2. Send targeted messages to the user base thereby expanding the reach of and engagement with your brand.

For the first, the onus is upon Twitter to create a compelling advertiser package while managing not to irk users. After all, I surely wouldn’t want every ‘Check Out’ on my tweets to link to some obscure and God forbid, even shady online store! For the second, being already involved with your brand in some fashion, these users would not be averse to follow your brand and hear from you. And thus you can get hold of a self-selected legion of brand followers. Scores of brand managers and custodians (not to mention advertisers) would willingly pay for such a list.

Twitter could actually commercialize the whole thing in an AdWords kind of package that allows brand owners to:
# Know who is talking about your brand
# Discover their following/follower statistics
# Analytics data of user/follower/clickthrough base
# Find out where are they located (potentially hairy issue!)
# View actual tweets from the user base and a reputation analysis (+ve, -ve and neutral)
# Send a sponsored message to them, inviting them to follow your brand
# Send them periodic brand-related messages etc.

A key challenge will be to ensure that advertiser volume is not so great that every word in your tweet becomes a link. Especially when the character limitation is so restrictive! A lot of Indian and MNC businesses currently on Twitter are barely scratching the surface. Such options will compel them to become more professional and to adopt Twitter as a reliable marketing channel.

There are several other but more conventional ways in which Twitter can be monetized. These include the usual suspects like Sponsored or Pay-Per-Click advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Paid Testimonials/Reviews and the like. However, all of these channels do very little to capitalize on the out-of-the-box nature of the medium. Rather, they seek to bring the fascinating medium back into the box of conventional online marketing. I, for one, would be sorely disappointed if the founders of Twitter choose to go down any of these predictable paths!

The strength of Twitter is the fact that it was able to cut through the online clutter and not only position itself as a new service, but also gain tremendous traction, PR and buzz value due to its radically refreshing nature. Each day, there are more and more examples of how people are beginning to adapt to/evolve this medium. Tweetmic.com is a fine example of this. Using their application, you can actually publish audio on Twitter. Or even Twisten.fm which crawls Twitter for tweets about music which you can then listen to. That opens up even more possibilities. Or even Ticktweet.com which has exposed Twitter users to a weekly investment game. 140-character, instruction-led, micro-blogging games could very well change the dynamics of the online/mobile gaming industry.

Personally, I would go by the promise shown by Twitter Apps which are continuing to make headlines for making money or being bought up. Video Comment Firm Seesmic bought up Twitter App Thwirl. And the very successful Summize was bought up by Twitter itself and turned into Twitter Search. If the virtual extended enterprise is showing so much activity, I’m pretty certain the day is not far when Twitter will lift the veil off all the secrecy and amaze the world the way Google once did!