Dell's Stephanie Nelson blogged on the official blog claiming that Dell had raked in more than $3 million of sales through its Twitter presence over the past couple of years. With more than 6 lakh followers on Twitter, Dell was able to reach out to its customers in better ways and strike attractive deals with its followers. ChubbyBrain, an organisation that brings together start-ups and investors has reported that an estimated $23.3 million has flown into Twitter-based start-ups. Pepsi Co released its Pepsi Raw Can with its Twitter URL on it. Well Twitter has opened up a whole new world of social media whose potentials are still not sufficiently known.
Twitter is a micro-blogging site developed by Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone based on a model of a instant messaging service they used for internal communication in their company. Twitter allows a tweeter to post 140 keystroke long updates which can be followed by his followers. Further it allows access through mobile phone devices. With more than $55 million of venture capital funding and a lot of Twitter-based apps and start-ups hiting the markets, things augur well for the emergence of Twitteronomics.
Twitter is a place where brands and corporations can meet customers hear from them and also talk to them. For instance right now Apple has launched a huge promotional campaigne over Twitter for its new iPhone. Corporations like Starbucks, SouthWest Airlines and WholeFoods have been able to boost their toplines by engaging their customers on Twitter. So even before Twitter made any dime for itself it has helped grand corporations earn millions.
New Media Advisor Andrew Grill said ' Two years ago if a customer faces a problem he can probably tell a few but now with Twitter he can tell to millions of users that too in real time. Many brands I work with aren't aware that people are talking about them on Twitter. Companies need to know what people say about them in such fora'. Thus Twitter is a place where marketers and PR professionals can get access to invaluable customer experience snippets. A good product manager can mobilise his potential and current customers to tweet about a product or feature. This is nothing but a focus group discussion done in real-time. The insights and data pouring in are no longer sample data but real data. Job seekers and head hunters have also taken notice of Twitter as the place talent hunt. The ability to network easily makes Twitter a cool place to hunt both jobs and talent.
But not all are rosy for Twitter. A recent Harvard Survey has found that 90% of the content on Twitter is generated by 10 % of users. Median tweets per day per user is just one while the 75th percentile mark is about four. A whopping 30% users donot have any followers at all. This has made critics to brand Twitter as a one-way one-to-many communication station. Also a survey conducted by Participatory Marketing Networks shows that only about 22% of the gen-Y use Twitter but 99% of the surveyed use one or the other social networking sites. The survey concludes that there are few technical snags in the design that is not conducive for gen-Y embrace.
But in the recent times Twitter has shot to the top popularity which can be seen from its burgeoning user base. But the most important challenge for Twitter is about monetising its business model. A business that doesn't earn would soon be out of business. With growing popularity Twitter has enormous profit potential and whole ripened field for it to reap.
Tweet me @T_Karthikeyan
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