Four-and-a-half years ago, Jack Dorsey sent the Tweet that would eventually spark a social revolution. At just 24 characters long, Dorsey and the Twitter team introduced us, one by one, to a new medium for connecting and communicating with one another. It would forever change how its community shared, discovered, and learned, setting the stage for a new era of influence and relevance. And in just four short years, Twitter would emerge as something more personal than a social network, it would serve as a human seismograph for facilitating, tracking, and measuring human movement and experiences.

Here we are, 54 months and 160 million registered users later, Twitter has officially established itself as a formidable and incredibly valuable community online. Reluctant to accept advertising for the majority of its life, Twitter is now starting to introduce new programs that officially position the company as both an integrated information and ad network.

Twitter is a special network that connects the “me” in social media to a very healthy egosystem. I mean this in a good way of course. While many have pegged it as a social network or a microblog, its adoption, behavior and the culture that has evolved over the years dictates otherwise.

We’re connected to individuals we know as well as those who inspire us. In turn, we also influence individuals we know and those we do not, but still follow our thoughts and experiences because they’re meaningful or useful. We share experiences and events that move and each time we do, our networks transform based on the topic of the moment. On Twitter, we’re communicating and responding based on context and as such, we form contextual networks that represent our interests, passions, and strong, weak, and temporary ties we maintain online and offline. And, this is why Twitter’s new advertising program is both an interest network as well as an ad network. It’s the difference between a social graph and an interest graph.

Credit: Paul Adams

Twitter recognizes that conversations expand and contract around interests and location and as such, can serve highly contextualized ads that deliver greater value than other social networks.

This is not Don Draper’s Madison Avenue

Recently Twitter co-founder Evan Williams stepped down from CEO and current COO, Dick Costolo assumed control. This move indicated that Twitter was officially open for “the ad” business.

Costolo officially debuted the new Twitter at Advertising Week in New York, where he told the audience, “We feel like we’ve cracked the code on a new form of advertising, and we feel like we’ve got a hit on our hands.”

The key words however are “new” and “form,” meaning that that legacy methodologies and approaches inhibited success in this new paradigm.

Indeed, gimmicks and one-sided communication are the pillars of old school thinking.  And, creativity is the minimum ante to play the game of “new” advertising in Twitter. It’s a matter of real-time vs. right time. And for many unsuspecting or ill-informed brands, many are simply competing for the moment or attention rather than establishing prominence and driving meaningful action.

Let’s take a look at Old Spice for a moment. When it ran the largely celebrated campaign where “The Old Spice Guy” created custom content for Twitter influencers, conversations around the brand soared.

Erin Korogodsky of Lithium/ScoutLabs also ran an updated view of Old Spice for our review.

But what goes up, must also come down. Conversations related to Old Spice soared for the few days that the unique campaign was alive, but eventually settled to everyday levels.To succeed in Twitter, whether advertising or engagement, we must think beyond competing for the moment and shift our mindset and supporting budget from that of campaign to a new world of continuum. Otherwise, all of our brilliance and spend, will blitz “the moment,” but never earn the level of prominence or community that matters online and in the real world. Thus, advertisers must focus on the very people (The 5th P) they’re trying to reach, and what moves them to take action, when their attention is focused everywhere but you. Give them something to talk about…

Twitter Promotes from Within

For years, Twitter focused on cultivating and protecting its community. The risk was not worth the reward, no matter how lucrative, if the community didn’t embrace or support the budding advertising system. Twitter introduced its beta advertising platform in April 2010 with Promoted Tweets. Early test cases by Virgin America, Starbucks, among others, would eventually sing its praises, deeming the Promoted Tweets program immensely successful. Even without those reports, brands and advertisers were lining up for an opportunity to finally quench a voracious thirst that at times felt would never taste refreshment. Everybody wanted in and now’s there’s a chance.

The company’s pilot program started with just six advertisers and already boasts over 40, including Ford and Microsoft. Costolo stated that he expects more than 100 by the end of the year. To support the growing network of advertisers, Twitter is introducing three avenues of advertising.

Promoted Accounts, a new program that suggests related brand profiles as a form of expedited audience building. The new vehicle kicked off with Xbox and HBO.

Twitter started to activate third-party networks to extend the reach of ads beyond Twitter.com. The first program commenced with HootSuite.

Next year, Twitter will introduce a self-serve advertising tool for local businesses and will serve each promotion based on location.

The two prevailing advertising programs will continue, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.

Promoted Tweets serve ads at the top of search results and they’re tied to the contextual relevance of each query. For example, if “Toronto” or “Canada” as the search term, the user might see an ad promoting Virgin America specials for flights to Toronto. While Promoted Tweets only appear in search results today, these units will eventually appear in the stream related to the context of what users usually Tweet about. If a user regularly Tweets about Starbucks, coffee or caffeine, for example, they might see a paid Tweet from Starbucks.

Promoted Trends are among the most visible and potentially viral. Twitter’s population contributes to the most popular trends based on the concentration and velocity of keywords and events. Advertisers can appear among the Twitter Trends as a Promoted Trend to the tune of $100,000 per day. Twitter states that 5 percent of its userbase click on the Promoted Trend, which is 5x the activity that a typical display ad experiences. Interestingly, and perhaps demonstrative of the architecture of the advertising program, Coca-Cola claims its response rates around Promoted Trends is significantly higher than 5 percent. And, in Coca-Cola’s campaign, users were required to click twice, once on the Promote Trend and second on the link contained in the Tweet.

The company has run more than 50 campaigns on Twitter and as Michael Donnelly, group director for worldwide interactive marketing at Coca-Cola recently told the New York Times, brands must be relevant in order to earn relevance, “At the end of the day, it’s a very different product than traditional online ads. People are engaged and looking for a specific topic, so it’s relevant.”

As brands vie for position in Twitter’s fledgling ad network, relevance is now the pillar for earning attention. Once a promotion effectively disrupts attention and the flow of the stream, shareability and actionability become paramount as a critical path to what I refer to as R.R.S. (Relevance Resonance Significance). Promoted aspects of Twitter now possess the opportunity and also responsibility to activate the social web, transforming from ads to social objects. As such, earned resonance is inherently amplified and thus encourages the survival, performance, and endurance of each promotion lifespan in the stream.

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The influence and promise of Twitter is only now starting to materialize. Everything that occurred prior to Chirp has lead us to this moment and as such, is almost worthy of categorization as BC (Before Chirp). Everything that happens now, is almost symbolic of a new movement (AC, After Chirp) and as such, it essentially starts a new chapter in the evolution of Twitter.

To truly capture the State and Future of Twitter and all that was revealed during its first official conference, requires additional time and space. In Part One, we examined the sociological impact of Twitter on society, the true size of the network, as well as equally exploring its challenges and opportunities. In Part Two, we’ll review and interpret streams, interest graphs, and Twitters new advertising platform.

Streams Define the New Web

At the focal point of the entire event wasn’t just the developer community; the real beneficiary of all that was introduced, was us, as users as well as individuals soon to be introduced to Twitter. We took center stage as information and details of the “new” Twitter visualized new realities and brought the future of our experiences to life, today.

As Chris Messina, Kevin Marks, Stowe Boyd and others have long signaled, the Web is becoming less about pages and more about streams. Our behavior on the Web today places the power of content discovery and consumption firmly in our grasp. We decide who we follow. We choose which links are worthy of clicking. We determine the information that’s worth reading and more important, worthy of sharing.

The feeds to which we subscribe, channel activities of those we follow in our social graph funnel into the streams that flow through attention dashboards, TweetDeck, Seesmic, HootSuite, PeopleBrowsr, et al. The attention dashboard is how we learn. It introduces us to new discoveries. We’re gifted the insight to see what moves and inspires those we follow. It is also where we earn relevance and hopefully prominence, as what we share in turn, determines its visibility, engagement, and reaction within the attention dashboards and ultimately the streams of those who follow us and who follow them.

The Ties that Bind: Interest Graphs

Social networking is evolving beyond the mere connections to other individuals. We are forming contextual networks by linking to those we know as well as the people we’d like to know. These direct and indirect connections introduce value to our routines, aspirations, and missions from a distance. The most fascinating aspects of contextual relationships is that they mirror our patterns of behavior in real life, however, the interactions we form and cultivate online cast traceable imprints and they define our actions, interests, and alliances more effectively than we may realize.

As we are complex creatures, we are captivated by an incalculable amount of pursuits. While we may follow and are in turn followed by many, the inbound and outbound relevant networks we consciously and unknowingly cultivate expand, contract and reshape based on keywords of interest.

In the era of the real-time social Web, there are already tools in existence with many more to appear that can immediately analyze online activity to summarize your interests and the social graphs formed as a result.

As we learned at Chirp, Twitter’s COO Dick Costolo refers to the idea of themed connections as an interest graph, the linkages of Twitter users who form connections and host conversations around common subjects. It is these inbound and outbound relevant networks that lay the foundation for Twitter’s monetization strategies.

Twitter’s Business Model: Relevance

Prior to the dawn of Chirp, Twitter introduced Promoted Tweets. Much like the ads that appear in Google Search, Promoted Tweets will appear at the top of Twitter search results and the company promises that they will be “useful to you.”

Among the first to adopt Promoted Tweets include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America—with more to come.

Promoted Tweets are clearly labeled as such, but their promise lies in the ability to look and act similar to regular Tweets, meaning that they retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting.

Perhaps the greatest value in Promoted Tweets is their ability to remain atop the stream of relevance. While each of the initial companies experimenting with Promoted Tweets maintain Twitter accounts, the volume of content flying through the attention dashboards of followers inherently buries the most attractive of offers posted by any business.

According to Twitter, Promoted Tweets will also be timely. As much of Twitter’s activity takes places outside of the dotcom, developers can choose whether or not Promoted Tweets are integrated in their apps.

As the company defines, the connection between Promoted Tweets and individual interests provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment, in real-time.

Brands aspire to earn attention and reactions in the streams of both social and interest graphs. If consumers share information related to the brand, earned media then becomes the word of mouth catalyst that then spreads the information across the Web.  Organic Tweets that mention companies and their services, offers, value, etc., are considered earned media. Promoted Tweets create a hybrid of paid and earned media, something I refer to as sponsored media. Promoted Tweets begin as paid media and transform into earned media with every ReTweet.

Costolo shared the love, positioning the new revenue model as helping “the entire ecosystem making money.” Therefore, the company is splitting promoted tweets revenue 50-50 with distribution partners.

Relevance and Resonance

Promoted Tweets are perhaps less controversial than what the immediate future beholds. Today, Promoted Tweets will appear only in search results. Once the system and the culture of the community is tested and immersed, paid Tweets will then enter the streams that connect interest graphs to topics of interest. Again, the value to the advertiser is that these Tweets will appear in the streams of individuals who have repeatedly demonstrated and communicated their interests through their actions and reactions as representative in the Tweet history.

However, with opportunity, new challenges face advertisers. Promoted Tweets force relevance into their campaigns in order to trigger positive responses and ultimately word of mouth and measurable activity. Twitter is not only changing communications between users, it also represents the impetus for contextualizing and humanizing advertising, in real-time. Without the ability to connect to and inspire people, campaigns will fail miserably. Those that appeal to the emotions and interests of consumers will spark a social effect that reverberates across the social graph online and eventually into the real world.

Dick Costolo shared a tangible example, “If I tweet a lot about coffee, I could be a great target for Starbucks ads, for example.” And, it is Starbucks that appears to fully embrace the notion of the real-time interest graph.

Not only is Starbucks among the initial adopters of Promoted Tweets, the company is also running an innovative outreach program with influence measurement startup Klout. Klout provides everyday marketers with the ability to identify influencers who actively tweet about related topics and also maintain a level of measurable stature with Twitter. These influencers were recently offered a free sample of Starbucks Pike Place Roast because of their earned authority on the subject of coffee.

In many ways, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets mirrors this strategy, but now extends it from individual influencers to anyone interested in coffee, not necessary influential on the subject.

Two words that were repeated throughout the conference, resonance and relevance, underscored Twitter’s commitment to creating an advertising platform that would earn the support of the community.

As Costolo noted, “Tweets that don’t resonate with users will disappear.”

Resonance is the reinforcement or prolongation of social objects. A Tweet, whether it’s paid or earned, represents a social object as its introduction and exposure possesses the ability to spark conversations. The extent and volume however, are determined by relevance and the shareability of the social object however.

Twitter is using resonance as a metric as it measures all the different ways people engage with Tweets and as such, produces a resonance score that determines the effectiveness and overall lifespan of Promoted Tweets. Resonance examines the visibility of a Tweet and actions surrounding them including how often they’re retweeted, favorited, etc.

In addition to developers, Twitter seems to truly believe that the user experience is the source of Twitter’s past and future. As such, it is the experience that is also the inspiration behind Promoted Tweets. Initially these paid opportunities will be based on a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions or 1,000 qualified individuals exposed to the Tweet). What caught my attention however, is that as Twitter learns about the performance, accuracy, and possibilities orbiting resonance as a metric, the cost model will migrate from CPM to a ROI model…yes, Return on Investment.  Details on the ROI model weren’t discussed, but I can assure you, anything that is introduced into the real-time Web triggers a response, even if that response is nothing. Advertisers will need to not only get creative, but also ensure that Promoted Tweets are both actionable, Retweetable, and, let me say that again, AND, advantageous.

Twitter’s metric could be applied to all forms of social media, from Twitter advertising to Tweets produced by its users to updates and postings across the entire social Web. Without relevance, we cannot trigger resonance, and without resonance, we cannot establish significance.

In social media, we earn the relationships, responses, and trust we deserve.

Previously: Part One - Twitter, by the numbers.

Next: Part Three – A look at the new features, technologies, and partnerships unveiled at Chirp.

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The attention dashboard is rapidly emerging as the online hub for sharing and discovering information, connecting us to people, content, and events in real-time. According to research, we’re already spending more time in social networks than we are in email. New studies are only fortifying these findings, documenting an increase time spent specifically in Social Media and blogs.

In fact, the Nielsen Company reports reports that time spent on social networks and blogs accounted for 17 percent of total time spent on the Internet in August 2009. Most notably, but not surprising, however, is that this discovery represents nearly triple the percentage of time spent using Social Media just one year ago.

As a result of our online interaction, advertisers are following our activities attempting to capture our attention where it is focused. The same report also found that online display advertising in top social networks has more than doubled year-over-year, increasing 119 percent. The jump represents an increase in spending from approximately $49 million in August 2008 to roughly $108 million in August 2009. Also of note, the share of estimated spend in social networks as also increased, expanding from seven percent in August 2008 to 15 percent in August 2009.

Unfortunately what’s missing from Nielsen’s report is data related to user interaction with ads. Although, we know that on Twitter for instance, users are twice as likely to click on ads, review products and visit brand profiles online according to a recent study by Interpret. The company surveyed over 9,000 Internet users in August 2009 and found that 24 percent of respondents that use Twitter reviewed or rated products online while only 12 percent of people who use other social networks, not Twitter, did so. Along those lines, 20 percent of Twitter users were also more likely to visit company profiles while non-Twitter users accounted for only 11 percent.  In advertising, the numbers were also interesting. 20 percent of Twitter users over nine percent of non-users reported that they would click on ads or sponsored links.

Source: MarketingCharts.com

Nielsen captured the industries leading the way for spending in social networks with entertainment, travel, business-to-business, automotive, and health representing the top five respectively.

Chart 1: Year-over-Year Percent Change in Online Advertising Spend by Industry (U.S., August 2009)

Source: Nielsen AdRelevance

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In light of the FTC’s recent scrutiny of Social Media practices and the activity that connects brands to influencers and ultimately consumers, we will soon see guidelines and corresponding penalties to serve as governance for future engagement.

My views and opinions of how the FTC is flawed in its dissection of the blogosphere and Twitterverse as compared to traditional media is reserved for a separate, but imminent post. As a matter of edification, I support the FTC’s mission of protecting the consumer. I just don’t agree with how it lumps earned mentions from meaningful and effective public relations (PR) and paid placement of content either through monetary or product exchanges. There’s a difference and we’ll talk about that later.

In the realm of sponsored posts or tweets, the FTC simply cannot delineate the differences between earned and paid postings and therefore assumes that most consumers are equally oblivious.

With Izea’s impending announcement of a new pay-per-tweet network, combined with existing ad networks and services such as TweetROI, Twittad, and Magpie, the FTC will be forced to pay attention to the paid endorsements in one of Social Media’s most promising and also elusive networks.

As you could possibly imagine, the reality of mass-sponsored tweets will raise a Tweetstorm that will immediately trigger a blogstorm, which will ultimately escalate into full-blown category 5 media hurricane.

But the reality is, whether you agree with them or not, sponsored conversations and paid tweets work when used in the correct situations as a complementary program in addition to other traditional and socially-focused engagement initiatives.

They increase awareness, expand networks, drive sales, build community, promote causes and raise money and awareness, and push traffic.

So, before the chaos and confusion ensues, I wanted to take a proactive role in steering a productive conversation to explore and introduce solutions, ethics, standards, and also reduce the possibility for consumer confusion and potential backlash.

I hosted a virtual summit on the topic via Facebook and invited pundits and industry leaders to discuss:

- The issues and options for meeting FTC guidelines

- The responsibility of brands and participants to provide consumers with information, context and intent

- The inevitable need for guidelines and standardization in disclosure practices

- And how participating in these sponsored conversations might impact the image of the sponsoring brand as well as the brand of the influential voices who lease their stature and social graph how it ultimately affects the dynamic, trust, vibrancy of their community

Disclosure certainly protects all parties involved, but it can also steer perception, which is why this discussion is so critical to the evolution of sponsored conversations.

The debate however, centralizes on the mechanisms and terminology for disclosure and whether or not they are effective when either explicit or implicit in nature.

I introduced options for consideration such as including a symbol or term in each Tweet (TM) that conveyed sponsorship or endorsement such “$,” “spon,” “paid,” “endorsement,” “sponsored” or possibly including an is.gd or bit.ly link to a landing page that could more effectively communicate the nature of the endorsement, ad, promotion, and the intention of the relationship. From the beginning, I did not purport the use of a hashtag “#” in disclosure however.

Stowe Boyd, a fellow digital anthropologist and social architect, and also the creator of Microsyntax.org, shared his views on the implied mindset associated with hashtags, “Generally, hashtags are indicators about the nature of the topic of discussion in a tweet, not the nature of the tweet itself. Note that sponsored tweets might (and often would) have other tags, which would lead to the “adness’ of an ‘#ad not standing out…’”

Credit: PaidPerTweet

As the conversation deepened, the rationale for one standard or solution unlocked a series of challenges that necessitated further exploration and discussion.

As I noted in the forum, the use of “paid” for example, precipitates psychological connotations that will evoke a completely different emotional response as compared to endorsement or sponsorship.

Anders Abrahamsson shared an interesting perspective, “Paid is coming close to that you sold out your integrity – some might call it prostitution.”

In response, Stowe offered a general resolution that resonated with many participants, “My recommendation would be to concoct a new indicator, perhaps ‘AD’, to place at the start of any sponsored Tweet. This has several benefits since anyone would immediately know, at the outset of reading the tweet, that it is sponsored. It stands apart from the tags, which usually appear in a cluster at the end. Also, this would make it easy for tools to build filters to block ADs or to easily find them, depending on your leanings.”

I believe there’s a difference however, between sponsored and paid tweets, one defined by purpose and objective. For example, I enjoy the tweets published by Gary Vaynerchuck and I observe that he has a tremendous following of developing wine enthusiasts, I may choose to either sponsor his Twitter wallpaper and/or his tweet stream. In this case, I don’t necessarily influence his tweets, I simply sponsor them.
This introduces another alternative through the disclosure of relationships directly on Twitter backgrounds.

However, if I pay for tweets specifically, then I expect to dictate the content related to each paid tweet.

Unfortunately, in the eyes of the FTC, they are the same. So, as Stowe says, “I think we should go with the FTC interpretation until the FTC changes it, and lump them all into AD. Note: if people disagree with this convention, they can do what they want. But I feel that biases should be as transparent as possible: as Weinberger wrote, Transparency is the new Objectivity.”

He’s right. However, I disagree with Weinberger. I don’t believe transparency is not the new objectivity at all. Objectivity was compromised the minute that links became the currency of the social Web.

We are biased one way or another when we publish information online. Whether we’re seeking attention, linkbacks, RTs, comments, traffic, feedback, etc. Transparency begets nothing. It is simply a buzzword associated with Social Media. Openness and candor are not substitutes for value, direction, education, or insight.

Brian Carter of TweetROI shared his perspective on sponsored conversations versus ads, “I still haven’t heard a good reason from those who champion transparency why we must disclose only financial motives, not all of them. SP and AD make sense. Surprisingly, even some quality Twitterers, don’t want to change the advertiser’s text. That’s where the concept breaks down-  they agree with the sentiment as written. Everyone interprets payment/ sponsorship differently….”

Ted Murphy of Izea responded with support and support for collaboration, “I am not sure there is one specific answer to this question. The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is there should be some form of clear disclosure required for any tweet where value exchanges hands. I 100% agree.”

Source

At this point, SP and AD become potential preambles for sponsored and paid tweets respectively.

But, Jeremiah Owyang, social technology analyst with Forrester Research, believes that they are not enough, “People won’t understand that ‘AD’ and ‘SP’ imply that those tweets are paid for. We need to be explicit, even if it occupies more characters in the tweet. The only solution is to specifically state, ‘sponsored’ in each…”

Again, I suggest that an included (shortened) URL that directs to a pre-defined page that explains the sponsorship and further clarifies the intentions and benefits of the program is another option to consider. While it’s implicit in nature, it communicates disclosure in a mutually beneficial way that serves the twitterer, the brand, and the reader.

If the leaked Twitter documents, also know as Twittergate, are anything to consider seriously as they relate to this topic, there’s reason to believe Twitter is already thinking about this as a form of revenue generation.

As Jeremiah explained, “Twitter may soon implement color coding or introduce different fonts for sponsored and paid tweets.”

James Eliason of Twittad believes that Twitter should release an API to support color coding as not only a form of disclosure, but also as a measure of preventing spam, “I can tell you from meeting with several Fortune 500 companies over the last several months they are intrigued about this new form of influence marketing if it is done correctly. What many do not want to have happen is the “high-jacking” of a hashtag or ‘ad’ format within this space. Imagine a situation where a large group of users begin doing their own false advertising on behalf of a brand, and simply throw in a #ad, #spon, AD, or SP.  This can not occur.”

Eliason took the case to Twitter co-founder Evan Williams where he recommended that Twitter begin the process of selecting specific ad partner providers to prevent dilution from spam marketers and ensure that the advertising comes from the source through the API. His idea is to assign the API calls from each ad partner through Twitter.com and also third party apps such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, and PeopleBrowsr. He also believes this introduced a new subscription model for users to pay a small fee for a non-ad model across all platforms.

Izea’s Ted Murphy is proactively contributing his ideas towards developing standards and also collaborating directly with the FTC on the establishment of fair guidelines, “They [The FTC] invited me to Washington discuss my thoughts about Universal Disclosure and the current loop holes in the guidelines that need to be closed. Soft-money transactions like free products and trips as well as the definition of experts and celebrities were also discussed. The bottom line is everything should be disclosed.”

He continued, “The biggest hurdle to disclosure standards in social media is not platforms like Sponsored Tweets or TweetROI. It is the PR Practitioners, Social Media Consultants and Brands that don’t enforce disclosure or disclose in different ways. If a tweet from a platform needs to be in different color but a tweet from a tweeter that just got a free trip or video game doesn’t it puts the platforms at a disadvantage. It’s unfortunate, but even organizations like WOMMA don’t have standardized methods of disclosure among members. The only way you will see standardized disclosure in Twitter and all of social media is if the government mandates it (which I am for).”

Indeed. Our challenge isn’t only to unite the industry of sponsored conversation providers around common standards and ethics, we must also encourage marketers to put them into practice.

Whether it’s on Twitter, in blog posts, or in television commercials, paid tweets are technically no different than the array of commercials and advertisements that are available to marketers already. However, they are compartmentalized in function, impression, perception and level of appreciation. And, there are undertones associated with each word that exude contrasting reactions. It all starts with the intention of the campaign and the calculated brand traits/characteristics, values, and sketch of the picture you desire to paint. These steps and measures guide sentiment and activity.

For instance, what comes to mind when I mention:

- Advertisement or ad
- Commercial
- Informercial
- Endorsement
- Sponsored or “brought to you by…”
- Paid placement
- Advertorial

My point is that each one of those words carry hidden meaning and nuances that will not receive due justice or rally support for standardization if represented by a one-word tag within a tweet. This is further complicated by the nature of the disclosure in relation to the essence of the promotion and whether or not it is implicit and explicit in the tweet.

While everyone agrees on the need for standards, and it’s clear that competitors will actually collaborate to help define them, there’s merit and promise in top-down regulation from the FTC and/or Twitter itself. In the meantime, I still believe that including “sponsored” as Jeremiah suggests, providing disclosure on individual wallpaper, or including a link to a page that offers context and clarity (using a custom URL shortener that includes “disclosure” in the construct – for example, disclosure/hgt7), represent credible alternatives in the interim.

However, as Eliason and Murphy note, the FTC and Twitter itself may have to step in to dictate a solution.

Integrity is a priceless commodity...

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MySpace has been losing “face” over the course of the last year. With sliding traffic and attention as well as shifts in management and reductions in staff, MySpace is not only a place for friends, but also a place for skeptics.

According to a Compete.com, Facebook received 122,559,672 unique visits in June 2009 twice that of rival MySpace, which realized only 60,973,908 unique visitors.  In year-over-year comparisons, Facebook volume skyrocketed with 248.17% while Myspace slightly recoiled, down 5.65%. The good news for both networks is that June represented positive growth over the previous month with Facebook visits growing by 8.45% and MySpace realizing a bump of 7.19%.

Not only has Facebook surpassed MySpace in traffic, according to eMarketer, Facebook appears primed to overtake the once dominant network in ad revenue as well.

Social Media appears to be an unsteady landscape tied directly to the popularity, trendiness, and momentum of any given network at any given moment in time.

eMarketer anticipates US spending at MySpace to fall 15% to $495 million in 2009 from $585 million in 2008.  In contrast, Facebook will grow from $210 million in 2008 to $230 million in 2009.

After reviewing the numbers, an interesting observation surfaced…Advertising spending on Facebook and MySpace alone account for 2x the total advertising dollars going to all other networks combined. Also, widgets and applications will continue to grow with funding up 6.1% from 40 million in 2008 to $70 million in 2009.

Even though Facebook 2009 projections are roughly 40% of MySpace revenue, Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Social Network Ad Spending: A Brighter Outlook Next Year, expects Facebook to surpass MySpace revenues by 2011, “Facebook, once a distant second to MySpace, has outperformed its rival in nearly every measure of usage—and is on track to surpass MySpace in ad spending by 2011.”

Williamson also predicted a brighter future for advertising spending on social networking, “The expected rebound in spending will come as more companies focus on creating and implementing an overall social marketing strategy. And it is a clear indication that the experimental phase of social network marketing is finally drawing to an end.”

Indeed 2009 painted a bleak picture as spending was down an estimated 3%. The good news is that according to eMarketer, budgets will grow by 13.2% in 2010 and 8.2% in 2011.

I imagine that by 2010, we’ll finally see a revenue model introduced by Twitter. Perhaps those numbers will only trend as opposed to fanning out once advertising becomes an option at the highly sought after network.

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Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Heuer, Louis Gray, Guy Kawasaki, and Jesse Stay (founder of SocialToo) and I hosted the second annual Twitter Bowl 2009 during the big game – additional history here.

Jesse Stay worked tirelessly to help us create a scalable and efficient system on SocialToo to track and share votes on Twitter. Thank you Jesse.

Now let’s take a look at the play-by-play and the final score in this year’s Twitter Bowl 2009.

As Michael Pilla stated on Twitter, this could be one of the largest focus groups to hit Twitter yet. Indeed the volume of referring traffic from Twitter to our survey was enough to max out the server to handle the tidal wave of simultaneous visitors.

Here are the top Super Bowl commercials you voted for on SocialToo…

2009 Twitter Bowl Top 10

1 – Transformers
2 – Hulu
3 – Career Builder
4 – Pepsi Max, “I’m Good”
5 – Doritos, “Free Doritos”
6 – Budweiser Clydesdale, “Fetch”
7 – Bridgestone, “Mr. Potatohead”
8 – Budweiser, “Conan O’Brien”
9 – NBC LMAO
10 – Pepsi MacGruber

Let’s compare our Twitter Bowl results to outher traditional polls sourced by Neilsen, USA Today, and TIVO…

Neilsen IAG Ad Ratings

1 – Budweiser, “Fetch”
2 – Doritos, “Crunch”
3 – Doritos, “Crystal Ball”
4 – Pedigree
5 – Careerbuilder.com
6 – Budweiser, “Generations”
7 – Budweiser, “Circus”
8 – Bridgestone, “Astronauts”
9 – NFL, “Usama Young”
10 – Pepsi, “Forever Young”

USA Today

1 – Doritos, “Crystal Ball”
2 – Budweiser, “Circus”
3 – Budweiser, “Fetch”
4 – Bridgestone, “Mr. Potatohead”
5 – Doritos, “Crunch”
6 – Cars.com
7 – Pedigree
8 – Pepsi, Will.I.am, Bob Dylan
9 – Castrol, “Grease Monkeys”
10 – Bud Light, “Meeting”

TIVO

1 – GoDaddy.com: “Enhanced?”
2 – Bud Light: “Summer to Winter”
3 – Careerbuilder.com: “It May Be Time”
4 – Doritos: “Crystal Ball”
5 – Transformers: “Revenge of the Fallen”
6 – Monster.com: “Moose Head”
7 – Bud Light: “Man Thrown out the Window”
8 – Pepsi: “MacGruber/Pepsuber”
9 – Dennys: “Thugs”
10 – Coke Zero: “Mr Polamalu”

As I’ve stated in much of my work on digital anthropology in social networks and micro communities, the associated cultures are unique to each locale. For example, Twitter is still driven by those individuals who reside on the left side of the adoption bell curve.

When you compare the Twitter Bowl results to Neilsen and USA Today (participants who most likely reside in the middle to the right of the bellcurve), the commonalities are obviously divergent. When compared to the TIVO poll, resemblances are clear, perhaps representative of the demographic and psychographic similarities between the user bases.

Analytics

Hosted conversations were tracked and channeled using the hashtag #superbowlads. Between Friday and Monday, we tracked over 1,500 relevant tweets containing “#superbowlads” as they related to the specific discussion we were measuring. This number assumes that the Twitter API was also running normally (which isn’t always the case.)

We also created a special short URL using Poprl (http://poprl.com/FmN) to measure referring traffic from Twitter to the SocialToo survey. We quickly realized that individuals in the first wave of RTs would share our Poprl link intact, but those not exposed to the shortened URL who in turn tweeted or wrote about #superbowlads as well their first wave of retweeters would either select their favorite URL shortener (TinyURL, Bit.ly, etc.) or share the original URL (http://socialtoo.com/survey/view/1221) with their social graph.

According to Poprl:

Over half of the referring traffic to the survey was sourced from Twitter.com with roughly another 25% stemming from Twitturls.com. Facebook News Feeds and the PR 2.0 post were also significant contributors to the survey.

Were the 2009 Super Bowl Ads Disappointing?

As a universal observation, the general public sentiment concurred that ad creativity and engagement overall was much lower this year. Perhaps creative budgets were restricted this year (although creativity isn’t necessarily expensive, sometimes constraint inspires genius and creativity). Maybe it was also a representation of the shared feeling of humbleness and economic sobriety. According to a “lite” follow-up Twitter survey, the numbers support this observation, with most either voting in the middle or towards the lower end of the scale.

Google Analytics sourced from the SocialToo survey indicate that for every one tweet about #superbowlads, three people voted. Engagement also hovered around a whopping 3.5 minutes, most likely due to the fact that that we also captured a dedicated stream of tweets related to the hashtag. It was interesting to read the dialog in a channeled flow.

Also there was a reduction in the gross discussion of the ads this year compared to last year. Many factors contributed to this trend as new, competing threads were pervasive on Twitter related to Super Bowl ads. Also, more people appeared to be more captivated by the game – as the majority of tweets were tied to game activity (as noted by the NY Times examples below).

Thanks to everyone for participating, and we look forward to hosting next year’s Twitter Bowl or perhaps we might have to augment the experience with a Facebook Bowl and FriendFeed Bowl as well.

As a bonus, make sure to visit this expeptional video created by the New York Times that documents keywords placed on a US map during the big game!

Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl – NY Times

Watch the 2009 Super Bowl commercials online here:

NBC
Hulu
Spike
Superbowl-Ads
Spotbowl
NFL

Related Posts on PR 2.0:

- Anheuser-Busch Debuts AB-Extras.com; Fuses PR & Social Media to Humanize Ads
- How Dell Deals with Twitter
- Need a Dictionary for Twitter?
- Introducing MicroPR, A Resource for Journalists, Analysts, & Bloggers on Twitter
- Twitter Tools for Communication and Community Professionals
- Is Twitter a Viable Conversation Platform
- Is FriendFeed the Next Conversation Platform
- State of the Twittersphere

In 2008, Jeremiah Owyang had a great idea to extend the conversation about Super Bowl ads from my living onto Twitter. Chris Heuer, Stephanie Agresta, Darryl Siry, Ben Metcalfe, Eric Gonzales, and I quickly supported the idea and set up a series of Twitter stations to kick things off. Josh Bernoff of Forrester analyzed 2,500 tweets and organized the results into an impressive ratings summary. That was the beginning of #superbowlads on Twitter.

This year, we will continue the tradition of rating the Super Bowl ads on Twitter, but with a small twist – one that hopefully makes Josh Bernoff’s life a little bit easier. Unfortunately Jeremiah and Shirley are returning from Hawaii, so I had a different idea to get us back into the game, while contributing and showcasing the results in real time.

This year, we’ve also rallied the support of Louis Gray, Guy Kawasaki, and Jesse Stay, founder of SocialToo. Since Twitter is rooted in public interaction and provides the ability to extend its functionality, I wanted to find a Twitter application that would allow us to not only monitor discussions and ratings related to #superbowlads, but also provide the ability to capture and present votes. This might be one of the biggest “social” focus groups to date…

SocialToo is a suite of productivity solutions for Twitter and other social networks. It’s most notable and unique feature is SocialSurverys, providing the ability to create elegant polls that can be shared across multiple networks (provides for automatic distribution through Twitter) and tracked in one central location for analysis.

Introducing the Second Annual Twitter Bowl…

Your hosts:

Jeremiah Owyang – @jowyang
Chris Heuer – @chrisheuer
Louis Gray – @louisgray
Jesse Stay – @jesse
Guy Kawasaki – @guykawasaki
Yours Truly – @briansolis

How to Play:

- If you don’t already have a Twitter account, join here.

- Vote for your favorite ads here and share the following link with everyone you know (do so often): http://poprl.com/FmN

- Discuss and rate each of the Superbowl ads on Twitter. Be sure to add this text #superbowlads, to each Tweet. Doing so will automatically channel your updates into the main dialog hosted at SocialToo (below the survey).

That’s it!

Enjoy the game and follow the conversation. We’ll publish the final stats and compare the how Twitter compares to mainstream polls.

Don’t forget, share this link!
http://poprl.com/FmN

Watch the 2009 Super Bowl commercials online here:

NBC
Hulu
Spike
Superbowl-Ads
Spotbowl
NFL

Today Anheuser-Busch announced AB-Extras.com – a social media destination for Bud fans 21 years of age and older to reveal the human element and stories behind the ads that will premier during the Big Game.

AB-Extras.com is a unique social platform for the internal PR team at Anheuser-Busch to also work more effectively with traditional and digital press and bloggers using the tools and services that they rely upon to publish and share stories.

AB-Extras.com features exclusive content using a combination of social tools and networks such as Social Media Releases (SMRs), YouTube, Blip.TV, and flickr, hosted on a blog platform. At the very least, it is a dedicated online newsroom that aggregates and packages disparate social elements from across the Web into a contextualized storyboard that streamlines the viewing, sourcing, and distribution of relevant information.

The press team at Anheuser-Busch is actively exploring the inherent benefits and opportunities of genuinely participating in the important and relevant conversations that are transpiring across the Social Web.

They’re learning from individual experiences driven by this new form of engagement to further evolve its communications methodologies and practices and also improve the foundation for building relationships. As the team is listening and internalizing activity, analysis, and feedback, they will also define new policies and amendments to the PR regiment in order to embrace public conversations through social networks and micro communities including Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed.

I’m also learning that much in the same way that public companies abide by existing processes and language when communicating through press releases for example, there are guidelines and procedures designed to help alcohol companies practice corporate responsibility not only in PR, but also in online community engagement.

I’m looking forward to working with Anheuser-Busch to further explore new ways to enhance and humanize the interaction between companies, journalists, bloggers, and the very consumers who contribute to the interpretation, perception, and dissemination of their story.

Press Release on PitchEngine

http://viewer.docstoc.com/

Anheuser-Busch Debuts AB-Extras.com

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- SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure, What This Means for Wires and Press Releases
- Social Media Releases In Action
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- The Future of the Social Media Release is in Your Hands
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