The Value Of Twitter– Its in the data
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
It seems like every time I comb through the latest technical blog posts, there’s another article discussing ways to monetize Twitter. Some folks think advertising is the way to go; others want pay per tweet, and still others want “click though” revenue. In May 2009, Twitter’s co-founders, Biz and Evan, proposed subscriptions for commercial accounts. The question is — do any of these proposals actually leverage the key strengths of Twitter?
The true value of Twitter is the data stored in the bowels of the Twitter network. All those bits of information — links to interesting articles and images, product recommendations, and off-the-cuff words of wisdom — this is what makes Twitter valuable. This data is gold, and if mined properly has enormous value. Biz and Evan seemed to have had some inkling of this fact back in 2008 when they purchased Summize search. Unfortunately, Twitter seems to be distracted with scaling issues recently. Data mining and search seem to have temporarily taken a back seat. Although they now direct customers to “Search” on the new landing page, they are not supplying any real tools to do so. Meanwhile, companies such as FriendFeed (now part of Facebook), bit.ly, tweetmeme, and others have put a great deal of focus on aggregation, tracking, and enhanced search tools for Twitter.
Tweetmeme tracks the number of times a post is retweeted as an indicator of the post’s popularity. The display is similar to Digg, ranking the posts by popularity within a category. Bit.ly allows users to track the activity of Twitter posts containing shortened links from the site. Users can easily determine how many times the link has been clicked and/or retweeted,. Bit.ly also displays the overall timeline of activity. Friendfeed provides a fairly detailed aggregation and search mechanism to mine through Twitter and most other social networking data services. The folks at Facebook were obviously not unaware of this fact since they recently purchased Friendfeed for close to $50 million. The one thing all the companies have in common is they have capitalized on Twitter Data.
In March 2009 the founder and CEO of Mahalo Daily (Jason Calacanis) made an offer to lay down $500k do get rights to @questions as a suggested user for 3 years. That’s how much he believes in the value of Twitter data.
Jorge Espinel discussed his views on the value of twitter data in his blog SpectatorBytes:
Twitter: The Creation of A New Data Corpus
“So, how is Twitter creating a valuable and new data corpus? At the highest level, Tweets are pieces of real-time data that users contribute to a database. I am not referring to the original Twitter use case of “I am enjoying a juicy burger for lunch.” I am referring, rather, to the emerging and powerful “use-cases” of users reporting on news, sharing and commenting on article links, uploading photos and video, promoting blog post headlines, tracking flight information, following financial news, etc. “
“There are several key implications from the creation of this new “data corpus”. A whole new infrastructure of services/experiences needs to emerge to unlock the value of the data. This has already begun in a similar way as it happened in the Web in the mid nineties. Directory and search services lead the way (e.g., Summize, Collecta, Oneriot). Uploading tools and analytics companies follow (e.g., 12 seconds, Twitpic, Twitvid, Bit.ly). New user interfaces start to be tested (e.g., Twubs, ExecTweets, StockTwits). Lastly, a monetization model/solution eventually emerges.”
I couldn’t agree more with Jorge’s observations. Twitter has most definitely created a new “data corpus” much like the oil poring from a newly drilled well— black gold, Texas tea.
The first place I start when looking for product comments, restaurant recommendations, events, and job postings is Twitter. If a quick search doesn’t unearth enough information, then I’ll post the question to my followers. The process hasn’t failed me yet. Twitter is still in its infancy (21+ Million users). Think about the power it will wield once it gets a following similar to Facebook (71+ Million).
It’s been said that knowledge is King. If this is true then social media platforms like Twitter are destined to be information royalty. In this battle the spoils are likely to go to the company that devises the most effective way to mine the data being collected.
Mark Nassal
