With all the new technological and conventional innovations related to advertising, many companies are forced to come up with newer and more creative ways to get their word out there. To that extent, I think looking at social networking sites like twitter (and by a small extension, mobile devices) is a great indication of where and how these ads will show up in our daily lives.
A professor for another class (Business of Media) that I'm taking is having us follow him on twitter, in fact he's said several times it's practically a requirement - to which a few of my friends remarked was pretty typical of twitter users. That is, that at first it looks like a symbol (or even more straight forward, a counter/measurement) of social status akin to how many facebook friends you have and the more followers you have the more popular you are. But this is now my 4th week using twitter, and I'm starting to really see just how useful and seriously functional (as opposed to nauseatingly self-absorbing) twitter can be.
To start with, twitter is a "fashionable microblogging service" who's latest valuation is $1 billion - a number that is not even based on any tangible figures. My first guess was that twitter makes all it's money with advertisements - but in the month that I've been (sort of) using the service, I have not seen very many ads. Much less, in fact, than the dozens of weightwatchers and Dell laptop ads I have seen on facebook. Why, then, does twitter to have such a high value? How is it even making money?
The short answer to that is buzz... which I won't get into too much, because that's a whole other topic for conversation. But essentially, twitter has a lot of potential in advertising - in information dissemination - if what you're following goes beyond facebook-type status updates.
If you are already talking to your friends about the latest TV shows, books, movies, even commercials then you already know what I'm talking about. If 10 of your friends really love the new Tarantino movie, you're that much more likely to see it. If they, and you, are on twitter tweeting - that is, updating - it enables companies, creators, distributers, etc. market to you as an individual because the one doing the advertising is actually your friend. And trending topics: topics that appear most often in tweets? Instant market research.
As for information dissemmination, it's quite easy to be in the know in a few seconds. I follow this blog through Google Reader which automatically updates through RSS feeds - basically it lets me know when there's been a new post. Imagine that each of us tweets when we've posted a blogpost, or that Song tweets when there's a new reading for class - complete with link and all. Or that you've heard that President Obama called someone a jackass, then you search for related tweets and in the next minute you can hear the sound bite for yourself. Maybe you want a quick answer to who will be hosting the 2010 Summer Olympics (it's Rio by the way). Twitter is like a Google search with the benefit of being moderated by millions of people.
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