Posts tagged ‘product’
Why Twitter Should Re-Name the Re-Tweet
Why would Twitter tinker with arguably its most powerful feature?
Let’s face it, the name “re-tweet” is an idiosyncrasy – one of many on Twitter (ex: “hashtag”). Idiosyncrasies are hurdles to new users. And Twitter has an issue engaging new users. It needs to overcome these issues to ensure it remains as powerful a conversational medium as it is a broadcast medium.
So re-name “re-tweet” what it really is: “like”. The reason we re-tweet is because we read 
something we like. Instead of working hard to educate new users on a unique convention, let’s teach them to hit the “like” button. Easy.
There’s no harm following a popular convention, as YouTube recently demonstrated. And there’s no bigger rival to Facebook than Google, so if they can swallow their pride to adopt a convention that Facebook popularized, Twitter can as well. The change would initially create hassles for the Twitter community, but we’ve survived changes before. And it will be easier to manage sooner, rather than later.
This seems to be a relatively simple way to make Twitter easier to use and maintain the power of the re-tweet. And that will lead to an increase in engagement that will serve all of us better. “Re-tweet” needs to go.
My New Droid
Two weeks ago, I bought a Droid. Why? I love great gadgets, but I am not a gadget freak who has to have the latest and greatest. Nevertheless, my BlackBerry is an irrelevant old model and our iPod Touch is of course phone-less and camera-less. I wanted greater social capabilities on-the-go.
The good news is it has mostly delivered.
Good: elegant integrations between functions, camera picture quality, on-screen keyboards, and the screen itself
Bad: a bit buggy, call clarity, too heavy, too easy to hit the bottom permanent buttons when screen is sideways and…
physical keyboard is a disappointment. I am using it to type this post and just this much has taken 13 mm so far. And my thumbs are sore. A blogging machine this ain’t.
Overall, though, we’ve become inseparable because there is so much to do and explore.
My favorite apps so far are HootSuite and RoboDefense. Let me know if you have any recommendations!
How Amazon Can Deliver More Value on LinkedIn
Here’s how Amazon could provide rewards to increase usage:
Do you use Amazon’s reading list on LinkedIn?
Five Reasons Why Ad.ly Will Not Survive
The November 22 New York Times article on sponsored in-tweet advertising intensified the ongoing discussion of this new practice. Start-ups such as ad.ly and Izea will pay twitterers to insert ads into their tweets, acting as an ad exchange matching publishers and twiterrers.
Other good coverage has included Scoble (not in favor) duking it out with Chris Parillo (in favor) and a defense from Mark Suster, one of the VCs invested in ad.ly.
At the risk of trivializing these and other compelling discussions, there is a thread of “advertising is bad!”, “no, it’s not”, “it’ll ruin Twitter!” running through the discussions. This is the wrong question; the right question is how sustainable and effective it will be. Effective advertising survives. Gimmicky advertising dies.
Here are five reasons why sponsored in-tweet advertising is a gimmick that will not last.
- Push vs. pull. This is essentially classic push advertising. But social media is about pull. This tension will break down the logistics of “pushing” uninvited messages into personal streams. Are the advertisers able to prepare their twitterers to handle responses? (“@MyFriendJoe thx 4 telling me about phone promo. Tell me more… “ ) Are advertisers prepared to allow the audience to control the message at all? Can advertisers react quickly given both the speed of Twitter and a distributed set of twitterers, with who they may not have any direct contact? How will this shade other social media initiatives an advertiser is executing? Are the marketing and customer service departments sufficiently aligned?
- Short-term vs. long-term benefits. By acting as a mouthpiece for advertisers, twitterers use the platform they’ve built to earn cash. But they’re decrementing their valuable assets (reputation) for short-term money. It’s like a homeowner borrowing against their home equity to buy Christmas presents as opposed to, say, a new kitchen that will enhance the home’s value. This is antithetical to social media, which is built to allow us to borrow against our assets to build more long-term assets: every time we post a link or join a conversation, we are advocating where people who have some level of trust in us should spend their time. Effectively, we are borrowing against our goodwill asset to further enhance our reputation or perhaps gain deeper insight. These might quantify themselves in the future as job opportunities or new clients, all of which are worth more tomorrow than even a few thousand dollars today. Quite frankly, this is short money for the advertisers, too. Sponsored in-tweet advertising will not really build evangelists. It’s the same as a CPM buy. Okay, but social media holds much more promise. Seth Godin nicely articulates these points in Meatball Sundae.
- Targeting and timing won’t work. A few years ago when I worked at BuyDomains.com, we tested inserting ads from an ad exchange on some of our content pages. Unfortunately, most of the ads were irrelevant and we earned little to nothing. There just weren’t enough targeted ads for our somewhat arcane content. The fact is, matching advertisers to publishers is complicated. There’s approximately 25 mm monthly visiters to Twitter.com, and probably another 25 mm on apps. And every one of those has a completely customized experience. So delivering the right message to the right person is going to be like shooting a basketball while the basket is moving. Moreover, the basket is moving at the speed of light, which is roughly how quickly tweets fly in and we scroll through them.
- Too easy to ignore. Users learn to filter out all forms of advertising they want to ignore. This format in particular will be easy to catch and ignore, since the exchanges seem to be doing the right thing and promoting transparency. And what the eye won’t catch, new spam filters in your Twitter eventually will. Regardless of whether this is technically spam or not, filters became ubiquitous in email for a reason and they catch a substantial number of non-spam emails, too.
- More effective forms of monetizing Twitter will emerge. Sponsored in-tweet advertising is a quck and easy way to satisfy the desire to monetize Twitter today. It’s like the easy Sarah Palin joke a comedian tells to transition to more compelling material. I won’t attempt to capture all of the Twitter monetization ideas here, but, my god, every day, I log on and tell everyone exactly what interests me and what I’m hoping to learn more about. This data is so rich that a better mousetrap is bound to be invented that will render the gimmicks irrelevant.
I do concede that this may work with generic messages from celebrities, further separating the personal use of Twitter from the professional. And, if it’s an easy CPM buy, it could be easy for marketers to explan and get budget approval. But, check out the MLM twitterers who blasted away thanks to the Times article. What does that tell you?
By the way, did you catch the ad I inserted into this post? The link to Meatball Sundae is an Amazon affiliate link, so I will earn cash if you click and buy it. Do you care? Probably not, because I’m not inauthentically hawking the book. It’s just a good book from a well-known author. Am I willing to hawk the book so aggressively for a few cents that I eat away at the your trust? No, of course not. So why would I do so on Twitter?
Selling Optimization
One difference managing a website at a non-web company versus a web company is vocabulary. I make sure to note which words work and which do not. One that clearly does not is “optimize”. While there’s no question about its definition among my audience, it isn’t immediately tangible for them how it applies to a website.
That was surprising to me. If you’ve been in product management, optimization feels natural. A recent post at On Product Management identifies optimization as a key component of a “Product Management mandate”. I believe the underlying difficulty for non-web audiences lies with the concept of continuous improvement. It’s a big shift to think that websites can – and should – be edited often. If web projects have always eaten up long cycles, that’s where your audience’s reference point will be
For me, the solution is to be as specific as possible. For example, I recommend “improving the display of the registration pages to ensure as many members complete the process as possible” rather than “optimizing the registration process”. Note the term “abandonment” is a bit foreign as well.
Below are the key hurdles to getting the necessary attention for the smaller improvements that, dare I say it, optimize your website’s performance:
1. Focus – Are stakeholders, such as content owners, incented by the website’s key metrics? If so, they’ll be receptive to learning how to best update the website. If not, then examine whether divisions of labor are clear. In this scenario, stakeholders will probably only update when they absolutely must (ex: compliance) and you will have to find another currency to get them on board.
2. Consensus risk– depending on your environment, it may have taken a great deal of consensus to get stakeholders to agree on what’s already been launched. Many will be weary of spending additional political capital on a decision they may not fully understand. To resolve, scope your changes so that a minimum number of stakeholders must sign off.
3. Credit – many may feel that a post-launch change, even a small one, is a criticism of their contributions. Ensure that stakeholders are receiving appropriate credit, be data-driven, and position your initiatives as “tweaks” not “surgery”.
4. Scope fear – stakeholders may not understand that optimization does not need to cost a lot. Be clear about timeframe expectations and expected impact. Don’t chew off more than your teammates can handle, even if it means curbing your desire to go fast.
5. “We did usability testing – it’s perfect” - Usability tests are incredibly valuable, but they certainly do not preclude future edits. Let’s say you brought in eight subjects to conduct testing of a recently launched website. What are the odds they’d all fawn in amazement over your perfect work? Or is it more likely that you’ll receive at least some additional insight?
6. Not sexy enough – Be data driven and have key metrics well-understood by senior leaders ahead of time. Make sure the key metrics are clearly connected to organizational goals. Then demonstrate the impact you can make on these key metrics. Highlighting web news from your competitors make never hurts, too.
7. Task-based vs. holistic approach - Many may be used to solving discrete website problems as part of project teams. Optimization contributes to holistic website management. I find that most people will be receptive to the big picture if you are clear about your approach. Clear metrics and executive-level engagement are big helps.
What are your organization’s optimization efforts like? What opportunities and challenges do you face?
My name is Adam Gross. 
