You can tell we’re in a new information generation when breaking news and major launch announcements are broadcasted in 140 characters or less.You can see what celebrities and “celebrities” are doing in their down time, read what’s being announced for your favorite entertainment medium and even blow your friend’s phone up with updates about the bagel you just ate or the squirrel you just hit with your car.
Twitter has hit the mainstream by storm during the past few years. And while many have joined and embraced the social networking site – I use it because I’m required to for this writing gig I have.I won’t lie, Twitter is a fun thing to do when I’m bored and feel like bugging my friends with my status updates, but I still don’t really see the overall value in it.I find myself using the site more because many of my favorite video game publishers and developers are now announcing new material over Twitter.With more and more companies breaking news on Twitter, this should mean more revenue going to the social networking site because more eyes are looking for that little blue bird.Unfortunately for Twitter, this isn’t the case.
Recently when accessing the site, users have been encountering the “fail whale,” the term brought up when Twitter’s servers are “overloaded with tweets,” and an image of the Twitter birds trying to hoist up a giant whale appears.As large of a networking site as Twitter is, it’s very understandable it may have some network downtime. Considering users can tweet from their computers, cell phones, iPods and even over Twitter’s own device known as TwitterPeek.Yet with more and more “fail whales” popping up, many users were starting to think something was wrong with their favorite new news outlet – and they were right.Last month, Twitter announced it had its worst month in terms of operation since last October, and it seemed to be struggling to maintain proper servers.The main thing that always confused me about Twitter is how the site manages to stay up, because I have never seen any type of ad or pop-up box when typing my 140 characters or less.It’s fascinating that Twitter is able to function without that added revenue. Clearly the site isn’t making any money, but maybe that’s not the founder’s goal.Last semester I wrote about Twitter’s @anywhere campaign which incorporated that little blue bird into numerous websites allowing readers to tweet what they were reading. Obviously that brought a little bit of income to the site through advertising dollars with its partnering sites.But still, it hasn’t been enough to keep that little bird afloat.However, earlier this month, something new popped up on Twitter.To the right of a user’s Twitter wall are 10 “trending topics” – the terms most tweeted about by users in a recent period. Generally, something must be popular to make it to the trending topics.Or you could do what Disney/Pixar did and buy your way into Twitter’s trending topics.To help advertise their latest movie “Toy Story 3,” Disney/Pixar purchased a spot as the 11th trending topic (interestingly not the first trending topic) labeled “Toy Story 3” with a gold box labeled “Promoted.”
Tweets from the company would also pop up on users’ Twitter walls even without having followed Disney or Pixar.While I understand Twitter needs to make some money to stay afloat, this could start to get annoying.Sure, just one promoted tweet won’t likely clog your wall. But remember, tweets can be read from all the devices I mentioned above.This could be great for advertisers looking for a new way to quickly and massively display their product to many potential customers, but it could easily become overwhelming depending on how many Twitter allows.Unfortunately, the promoted trending topic is now taken down since the movie’s release, but that doesn’t mean users won’t be seeing more of them.Hopefully Twitter will be smart and keep this under control – as well as finding other ways to make money. The last thing that needs to happen is Twitter becoming a pay site or begin giving out user information to advertisers à la Facebook.–Contact Adam Arinder at [email protected]