Does it work? WSJ says that Samsung's poke at Apple
has been viewed 32 million times on YouTube. So, um, yes, it worked in
the sense that people watched it. Will that translate into higher sales
for Samsung? Maybe. More important is what this says about Twitter role
in the marketing universe. Twitter is the least commercial of the major
technology platforms—Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are all
explicitly commercial to one degree or another. Twitter, on the other
hand, barely taps its audience for revenue—you might see a suggestion to
follow someone who paid for the privilege, but that's about it at
present, one reason that the company has yet to go public (it helps to
make money).
Yet there's mounting evidence that Twitter's very uncommercial
nature may be its greatest asset, not only to its audience but to
advertisers as well.
Twitter is becoming the
portal through which many people keep track of the more important news
in their lives—Facebook is for baby photos, Twitter is where you keep up
with Nicholas Kristof or Salman Rushdie or, um, Bieber. That gives it a
legitimacy and power that few social media can match right now and it's
been showing lately. The conventions and presidential debates both saw
huge surges in Twitter traffic, enough data and conversation that
mainstream media was forced to report on it. There was the Big Bird flap
that led PBS to respond very publicly in tweets, even bringing
President Obama into the tweet barrage. Now advertisers are starting to
look at Twitter as the ultimate focus group. Can Twitter turn that into a
revenue source? Should it? One thing is certain—Twitter has tapped into
a demand for unfiltered conversation and commentary on a more adult
level than other media have been providing.
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