Adam Jewell - Search & Affiliate Marketing

In case you haven’t heard about the latest social media craze, microblogging site Twitter.com on the net, on the news and everywhere else, it appears to be THE next big thing in social media. Another site with lots of users but extremely challenged when it come to generating revenue and coming up with a business model.

The folks at www.current.tv have come up with some clever Jib-Jab type videos. One of the latest is about Twitter, Titled Twouble With Twitters and can be seen below:

People use Twitter for a variety of different things. Some use it exactly as depicted in the video while others use it to offer another means of customer service or disseminating coupons. Twitter can and often is a big time sink with sometimes questionable benefits. It serves as a means of self expression for many people and a quick way to communicate for others. Pretty soon it is going to be time to see if it is possible to monetize a conversation. My guess is it is possible but the upside is minimal.

Google has the best source of revenue from online advertising locked up in search. The mindset of a consumer using a search engine is that of someone actively looking for something; trying to satisfy a need. On Facebook, people go there to see what their friends are up to and may opt-in to various applications and offers from various merchants. Typically people dont go to Facebook to shop as they do with Google.

Twitter is sort of a cross between Google and Facebook. Twitter is full of useless information but also has some golden nuggets, however it is still fundamentally a conversation. Can you monetize a conversation or the act of searching conversations? I think the jury is still out but my guess is not very effectively. When you want to search for something to buy, you go to Google or a shopping engine. You may post a question on Twitter looking for reccomendations but that question is most likely to be answered by another Twitter user. It’s an exchange of information that Twitter won’t be able to monetize unless they start inserting some kind of affiliate tracking code in product and site links that people post in their conversations. Should Twitter embark on an AdWords style advertising program, the click-through rates are likely to be in the range of banners ads (basically zero) because a consumer on Twitter is not likely to have the same intent or be in the same mindset they are when searching Google, Yahoo!, MSN or Ask.com.

Twitter can be a cool application for some purposes, however it is fundamentally a social conversation tool whereas Google is an intent and need based “converstional” tool. Twitter will probably burn through a lot more cash over the next few years and months if it stays independent. Since it is unlikely to be able to stand on its own from a financial point of view, it will sadly probably end up as a new Google Beta product. Twitter may prove to be a nice compliment to another real business but I doubt it has any serious revenue potential of its own.

According to the Twitter Blog, Twitter just closed another round of financing with Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. While the revenue stream is still a mystery and yet to be tapped, this sounds like it will give the Twitter team of 29 people room to grow and create a strong platform for a bigger ecosystem to develop around Twitter.

Ever heard of Twitter at www.twitter.com? It is one of the few useful social networking sites. It could also be called a microblogging site. When you setup an account on Twitter you can “follow” other people on Twitter and see what they have to say. Other people can follow you if you let them and they choose to follow you.

Are you interested in skiing?
Are you feeling a little unnerved about the peanut butter salmonella scare becaue you or your kids like to eat it?
Do you want to be able to quickly get information about unfolding events like the plane that crashed in the Hudson River?
Do you want to see what people are saying about search enigne marketing?
Concerned about the TARP bailout that is sucking all the tax payer dollars from US citizens?
Maybe you just want to see what people are saying about Obama.

Whatever you are interested in, you’l find a conversation about it on Twitter.

Unlike Facebook and MySpace that just have random stuff from various people with no particular order to it, you can instantly find a conversation on almost anything on Twitter.

Not only do people discuss current events and hobbies on Twitter, they talk about products, brands and experiences with companies.

What to see what people are saying about Subaru and find people to ask about thier Subarus? You’ll find it on Twitter.

Need to find a place to open a checking account or get a mortgage and considering Bank of America? You’ll find people talking about Bank of America on Twitter.

Thinking about buying a new home and considering Toll Brothers? Do a search on Twitter and see what people are saying about the company, Toll Brothers homes and the stock performance.

Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds but it is still one of the social networking types sites that many people and companies are not familiar with. How could Twitter change that? Use PPC Search! Search done well is a conversation. The consumer turns to a search engine, types in a query which is in effect a question. By linking the keyword triggered search ads to relevant Twitter search pages, Twitter can potentially introduce millions of people to Twitter by dropping the in the middle of a conversation about the topic they are seeking infomration on.

Presumably at some point Twitter wants to make money to generate some kind of return on the 250 million or so it has received in investment capital. Those with the big pockets are companies pushing products. What better way to introduce large companies to Twitter than to bid on their brand names and link to a search page of Twitter results with a conversation about the brand? Since lots of big corporate types don’t know the Internet from a billboard, dropping them right into a conversation would be the best way to get them to pay attention to Twitter without having to sell them on it.

Once Twitter has the attention of brands, retailers and other businesses, it will be much easier to turn Twitter into a company that makes money and work with advertisers to figure out an advertising or subscription model that makes sense and money for Twitter.

Take some of that investment cash and position Twitter as the answer to millions fo search queries and watch the membership begin to skyrocket!

There is lots of hype in the social networking area on the Internet. Facebook is supposed to be valued at 15 Billion, MySpace got purchased for 500 Million a while back and now LinkedIn.com is supposed to be valued at a 1 billion. While all the values are probably questionable at best in this space, LinkedIn.com is actually a really useful site with meaningful interaction among members of the site facilitated by the unique Q&A section.

It was a few years ago that Bryan Eisenberg at FutureNow sent me an invite to join LinkedIn and since he’s a pretty smart guy and knows a thing or two about the Internet, I signed up for it. For the longest time, I didn’t do anything with it but then the site started to pick up some steam, people started to interact on it, the Q&A started to come alive and there was some engaging conversation taking place on the site. The profile for Adam Jewell is here and now when you search Yahoo! for Adam Jewell, they put the LinkedIn profile at the top of the page. I’m not sure if I like that or not but I guess it makes it easy to do research on people.

LinkedIn is probably a hotspot for recruiters and sales people. They’ll get your information and call you to try to sell you stuff or get you to take another job but my experience is that it has always been pretty mellow. You don’t get hounded and if you are not interested, they’ll probably stop calling you after a while. With LinkedIn, it makes one wonder how much you really need to deal with recruiters. Sure, some companies only take applicants from recruiters but others will go direct and LinkedIn makes it pretty easy to find people and look at their qualifications and what types of things they are interested in.

In any case, if you are going to participate in the social networking craze and put up some profiles here and there, there are two sites that I’ve found to provide some value so far. LinkedIn.com for professional networking and Meetup.com for real, live social networking.

Social networking is all the rage but for the most part it seems like a bunch of hype. My Space seems like yesterdays news, Facebook and privacy don’t belong in the same sentence and I haven’t found any compelling use for it. If you are going to dump all your personal information in a database somewhere it seems like you should get something for it. Of all the “social networking” sites out there, there seem to be two that are truely useful.

LinkedIn.com provides a great place for social business networking with their Q&A section and an intuitive easy to use interface. If you are looking for a job or business opportunities it’s a great place to be.

Meetup.com is more like a live social networking site. You know, not just somewhere where you dump a person information but where you find like minded people and actually go do things with them instead of just poking them or finding out what they are buying you for Christmas. Meetup puts the social in social networking.

How does Meetup.com work? Well, just like other social networking sites you sign up and create a profile. You don’t have to put in a ton of information but can put in as much as you want. Once you’ve signed up, you join groups. There are groups for just about anything you can imagine. Want to find a local windsurfing group? No sweat, there is one nearby in Wayne, PA. Hollywood Pete puts that one together. It doesn’t cost anything to join Meetup.com and get involved in one or more groups but it there may be an expense to actually go to the activities offered by the different groups.

Meetup makes money by charging people to create and maintian groups on the site. Prices range from $12.00 per month to $19.00 per month depending on how long you pay for the group. The $12.00 rate is for six months in advance, the $19.00 rate is if you pay by the month. Either way it is a social networking site with a business model that gets revenue from its subscibers. What a novel idea! There is some advertising on the site that may generate revenue but I’d bet most of the money they geneate comes from subsciption fees.

In addition to being a useful, social, social networking site, it can be a great place to start a business. When you create a meetup group, you set the price that people pay to attend events. It could be a dollar or two to cover the cost of the meetup group, it could be $1000.00 if you are putting together a group trip to go skiing in Colorado for a week.

So far, I’ve been to the windsurfing meetup and the local Plymouth Meeting Entrepreneurs meetup. Coming up soon are some other more adventurous events including a Zip Line canopy tour at Spring Mountain put together by TerraMar adventures, and a whitewater rafting trip up in the poconos also by Terramar. There are local Philadelphia salsa dance groups and there was a Segway football event last week. Whatever you want, you’ll find it on there!

So if you want to join or invest in (if they should go public) a social networking site that is actually useful and has a real revenue model, hop on over to Meetup.com, have a good time, start a business or make get some decent returns if they decide to go public!