Indeed there’s many changes going on at Twitter these days but what does that mean for you, the user? Well, with Twitter you never really know and for the user Twitter really can be defined as being useful for many various things. To some Twitter is a personal bulletin board for sharing thoughts and tips, for others Twitter may be an engagement platform for customer service, for many it may simply be an extended RSS feed used to amplify ones reach… there really is many uses for Twitter – perhaps too many. As a result Twitter is clamping down on developers and restricting the reach that third party developers can achieve with the API – essentially weeding out some of the “fluff”. Part of the reason for this is likely to help in building the ultimate user interest graph.
Source: reuters.com via Glenn on Pinterest
Enter advertising… yes indeed, Twitter is largely becoming about advertising and it should be no surprise that Twitter is working hard on developing a platform and a resource that advertisers will embrace… perhaps a good move particularly when you look at the dismal results that facebook has had in their efforts to reach users with targeted ads.
Word of this was further reinforced recently when Twitter announced a partnership with HootSuite (think social engagement platform for enterprise) which involved HootSuite Pro customers being given $100 Twitter advertising vouchers so they can get started with the service – see details on this here.
Moving forward, Reuters has provided more on this topic with details of Twitter’s plans to focus on the user and help to create an environment that advertisers will embrace. The idea here is that your twitter stream will be used to determine your likes and interests in order to enable advertisers to reach you with messages that will appeal to you. Indeed it sure makes sense, particularly when you look at how Twitter is used compared to other social platforms. Twitter really is more personal, many sharing glimpses of their personal lives, their work, hobbies, interests and more and users really do share much more information much more often via Twitter than they do on facebook (just think of how often you tweet compared to post on fadcebook). This from Reuters… “Twitter engineers believe they can build a compelling ad delivery platform, particularly if marketers craft ads that seem to blend in with the tone and format of the service’s flow of tweets, which are seen by some 140 million monthly active users.”