Twitter promotions can add up to millions

Well, this is an interesting tidbit: Computer giant Dell told Internet News that its "Twitter sale alerts" have added up to about $1 million in revenue.

As we all know from Mike Myers' "Dr. Evil" character in the Austin Powers movie franchise, a million bucks isn't a whole lot of money for a major multinational corporation. But it does have something to say about how Twitter is transforming from gimmicky messaging tool to marketing powerhouse. Fire-sale start-up Woot showed that it's possible to take advantage of Twitter's rapid-fire nature to advertise fleeting deals; shoe retailer Zappos has gotten praise for using Twitter for customer service.

Low-cost airline JetBlue, as the Internet News article points out, also uses Twitter for both fare deals and customer service.

More compelling is what this can mean for Twitter's own not-yet-existent business model, which looks like it might involve premium accounts for businesses using the service. With companies touting retail success, this could widen the window of opportunity for Twitter to start encouraging them to, well, pay up.

[gggg sssss]

and twitter users are not revolting when they pay for these on their mobiles? curious.

Great points Caroline. Another important aspect of Twitter's impact on companies is the cost of inaction. We heard about Exxon's brandjacking. Other companies have been lax in protecting their brands on Twitter. When it costs nothing to claim your name (e.g., http://www.twitter.com/exxon) it seems at best naive and at worst negligent not to at least register your brand name and put your logo on the page.

I recently blogged about Twitter disasters of 2008 and negative impacts on several brands.

http://www.twitterthoughts.com/social-media-news-analyses/2008/12/16/5-worst-twitter-disasters-of-2008-twisasters.html