New Twitter Interface
Point of View
By Mindshare, 20 September 2010
What's happened?In the ever-evolving online competitive landscape, Twitter has upped the stakes by rolling out a new more aesthetically pleasing homepage that blends both Facebook and Google features to strengthen its position as “the information network.” Most notably the new site includes multimedia (photos and video) for the first time adding some emotion to the existing 140 characters allowed. Additional features include a social-graph building application called “you both follow”, a "see who's here" section introducing users to relevant friends, celebrities and brands, and a constantly updated section for Top Tweets (algorithmically selected interesting tweets).
Why has it changed? The new layout is impressive and is clearly designed to help Twitter entice new users to grow beyond its current micro-blogging audience of 145m. In particular the multimedia options are designed to not only entice users but also give them less reason to leave Twitter; by keeping them engaged and on-site for longer users will also hopefully see and/or interact with more advertising.
The new site adds more value to those using the new Twitter
direct instead of through various applications. Currently Twitter gives a 50% share of advertising to the creators of these applications, so if they can convince more people to use the site direct it means more advertising revenue for Twitter and less for application developers.
What does it mean to advertisers? The new format immediately makes itself more attractive to brands wishing to buy sponsored tweets and subsequently own a portion of the homepage. Top tweets and topics can expect (at least) 25+ tweets a minute. However, to maximise the value of this kind of activity a brand needs to be able to respond and engage, which can require significant resource.
The other key area to be aware of is how this affects social PR. Twitter is all about immediacy, and now pictures and videos of key events, product demonstrations and PR launches can be online in seconds. In 6 months time will people still be going to YouTube to find the very latest video content? Maybe, but an increasing amount will be going to Twitter first as their “information network” and it will be essential that brands and their agencies learn how to best utilise Twitter's new functionality to maximise these opportunities.
Look for more manoeuvring from Facebook and Google in the coming months as they all jockey for position in the increasingly opaque space between real-time social, search, and information networks. Until then feel free to contact Mindshare for detailed guidelines on the latest Twitter advertising opportunities, as well as results and learning from the “promoted tweets” trials in the US.
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New Twitter Interface (pdf, 2.03 Mb)