Dear Twitter: Please take my money
With respect to my cranky co-worker Charles Cooper, and reversing even my own Oprah/Kutcher-prodded twitterrant the other day, Twitter is an important platform for publishing and marketing, and it needs to be discussed as such, not brushed aside.
The free platform, originally used for not much more than finding parties with free booze at South by Southwest, has become important enough to business and commerce that a media company (CNN) just acquired the branded CNNbrk account complete with followers. In other businesses around the world, meetings are happening where product marketing and branding execs are trying to figure out how they can exploit the platform without being branded, themselves, as corporate tools. I have been in such meetings.
There is real business happening on Twitter. Yet Twitter itself is still run too much like an experimental start-up. There's too much about the service that's unbusinesslike for businesses to rely on it.
For example, I was recently locked out of my Twitter account due to a password snafu. It was resolved, I must note, extremely quickly, after I e-mailed Twitter technical support. But it wasn't clear to me that Twitter as a company had any actual responsibility to reply to me as quickly as it did. It wasn't obvious that there was a guaranteed service level or response time expectation. This is a platform I'm supposed to be devoting real marketing dollars toward?
Then there is the issue of branding and account names on Twitter. Some people, like me, were lucky enough to be born with unusual first names and were also on Twitter early enough that we we able to grab our "brand." Others have had, or will likely need to do, back-room deals to get their names, since buying and selling accounts is, technically, against Twitter policy.
Still others--at least two people I know--have used their connections at Twitter to snare the use of registered but inactive user accounts. The Twitter name space is a market with unenforceable rules and no transparency. Owners of small brands cannot feel safe that their branding on Twitter will be protected. Twitter's posted policies are a good first starting point, but there's not enough here to bank on.
Finally, let's talk about the reliability of the service, which, as I write this, is "over capacity." No amount of money thrown at Twitter at any given exact moment can banish the fail whale. But if I were running a program on Twitter that was, for the sake of argument, scheduled to run simultaneously with a live event--say, a Super Bowl ad--I would sure want to know whom I could call at Twitter to yell at to get this fixed.
I'd want a contract with a penalty clause for downtime to wave in that person's face. Without a contractual, monetary business relationship, there's no actual responsibility, and who wants to base a business plan on good wishes and intent?
Of course, it needs to be said--loudly--that as free services go, Twitter is pretty good. The team does not radically change its terms of service, design, or APIs frequently, ending up alienating developers or users in the process, as Facebook does.
But if a corporate executive is going to put his neck on the line and link even a small part of his success to Twitter, he's going to want Twitter's skin in the game as well, not just a history of pretty good service coupled with its staggering ambition.
So, please, Twitter, let me pay you. Twitter is worth money to me, but until you let me pay for a guaranteed service level or for the continuity of my brand, I'm not convinced I'm worth anything to you.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
Twitter makes me sad on many many levels. I would really like to see a movement in technology to make our lives easier again. Once upon a time there were wonderful inventions like the word processor and the spreadsheet, that took tasks that used to require full time office people, and reduced them to a menial sub-set of a person's job. Somewhere along the line technology ceased to be about marginalizing labor that could be easily automated and became about filling all the delightful free time we gained from the previous innovation with more technological garbage.
After completing the useful work I need to complete in a day I don't want to spend my time reading inane 140 (or whatever the number is ) character messages that have no meaningful human ideas in them 90% of the time, or finding out just how drunk the guy who tagged me as a "friend" and who I accepted to up my friends number got last week, and I sure as (insert expletive of personal choice here) don't want to let any more "marketing" junk into my life.
I want to spend that free time tending my garden, and cooking food in my kitchen, and volunteering in my community. We need to build a society on meaningful human connection and the advancement of developed human thought and ideas and creativity. While certain Web 2.0 sites like deviantArt do this, most are a cesspool of drivel and distraction. Why learn to do something meaningful and constructive as a human being when you can read someone's twitter feed. Really?
Basically, Twitter got abused (sad for something so young). If it hadn't, then I'm sure it would have fit into your "meaningful human connection and the advancement of developed human thought and ideas and creativity" idea.
While I openly admit that there are companies exploting social media services for their own advantage, there is also real movement towards more 'social' or 'collaborative' business and marketing models. Likewise, I see that these platforms are equally being utilised for the benefits of communities as well as business.
In my area (Cornwall, UK), there has been a lot of take up from small to medium enterprises (SMEs), as well as community groups, charities and other groups. These disparate groups have formed distinct support networks, in line with the underlying philiosophy of these sites. When someone needs support, guidance or a simple answer to a question they are now able to turn to that community for support.
In February, we saw local Twitterers drwan from the student, business, political and charity population, join to organise and celebrate a Twestival, raising around £600 for an international water charity. The results of which have already been seen in Africa with the first wells to be dug with the money drilled last week.
In April we have seen the start of our local Social media cafe, where those meeting online, regardless of any business interest have been given the opportunity to form a group that meets on a regular basis.
In an area like mine, where people are spread out across large distances (relative to other areas of the UK), with a difficult transport infrastructure, these sites offer whole new ways to keep connected with others in the community - whether for business, social or community action.
With regard to the arguement that these sites are for people not businesses, I would say that they are for both. The model lends itself to allow companies to communicate with individuals and vice versa. However, it should be noted that communications work in this environment more effectively when a business allows a person to communicate directly with people rather than the 'non-human' brand speaking.
These sites do not replace human interaction - they strengthen it. They allow people to keep in touch between face to face meetings. They highlight shared interests with other people locally or globally and provide a platform to build new relationships. They allow people to communicate openly with friends, businesses, charities, politicians or other organisations in a way previouly unimaginable.
I am sure that there are those who would like to keep sites such as Twitter and Facebook for themselves. There will always be 'innovators' and 'early adopters' fleeing sites as they become mainstream. However, I cannot see the disitinct changes in the way we comminicate, that are taking place right now, fading away or being lost altogether.
As for a need to keep these sites free from businesses, that is simply unachieveable if we would seek to maintain their benefits. At somepoint these services will need to earn money to support their existence and as such a longterm revnue model is required. If the users are unprepared to pay, as many are, then taking fees from business users may be the only model.
If Twitter doesn't fit in with your marketing plans, maybe you should create your own that is geared for business and promotion. Except no regular person will use it.
Arrogant much? Sheesh!
Twitter is what it is. And to the extent that the people with the original vision see fit to make changes or improvements do so, that's the extent it will change. And we all just have to deal.
Sue Densmore
twitter.com/zamar1
zamar1@comcast.net
The reason Twitter generates so much discussion in this regard ("how I'd make Twitter so it was better for ME") is because the product itself only exists because of that certain base of people who think anyone else cares where they are at any particular point in time. It's ALL about "me"...not about the millions of other users, not about the billions of non-users.
So, it's completely natural to expect this sort of thing from its users.
- by ca5ter April 20, 2009 7:15 PM PDT
- I Twitter on the $h#tter
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