Q:How does Twitter make money? A:It does not. Yet.

This does not mean somebody invested all that money and effort into Twitter just so that suicidal women can tweet Demi Moore or Thomas Friedman can ask us to “… take a bow, as a country.” Twitter will eventually make money by selling user data to advertisers. Not your email address and phone numbers, but your age, gender, and maybe – information about the books you read, products you use, communities you are a part of – anything you volunteer to share. 

pic:Maria Reyes-McDavis and Olando7, flickr.com

I spoke to Joseph Smarr, chief platform architect at Plaxo Inc. (a social networking website), about how social media sites make money; here are excerpts from the interview.

Smarr: “Right now, Twitter does not make money. The key asset for social media companies is the rich data about users and their behavior. That’s the kind of stuff that advertisers want. It’s valuable information. On social networks, you potentially have intimate details about your users. People are spending more and more time online. And advertisers will also move online. Online advertising can be quantifiable and targetable. It’s more contextual.”

pic: Angela Penny, flickr.com

So, as more and more of us send more and more tweets, we help Twitter gather information about our favorite restaurants, sports, movies, the kind of stuff we like to read etc.  And, if Dominos wants to advertize its new whole-wheat pizza, and I have been tweeting about whole-wheat stuff and pizza etc, chances are, the Dominos ad will appear on my Twitter page. (And chances are, I’ll be eating the whole-wheat pizza for dinner that night.)

I’m not saying this is exactly what Twitter will do, I’m only using the company as an example.  And those of you who are already livid and paranoid about Twitter going through your information and selling it, get over it. 

What did Smarr think about social media sites charging money for login access? – Smarr: “It’s going to be very hard to have payment based sites. They [the social media companies] need more and more people to login to their sites and build a huge network. The bigger the user base, the richer their data. You will see a premium model, for additional access and upgrades, like on Linkedin, but that will be for niche audiences. I don’t think any of these sites can afford to create a price barrier.”

Good, I like Twitter because it’s free.

 

 

 

What recruiters look for on your blog and Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter pages

Do You Pass the Social Media Recruitment Test? asks Mashable.com – THE place to go to if you want to read anything useful on social media.

In the story, Boris Epstein, the CEO and Founder of BINC, a Professional Search Firm, says, “In the golden days of recruiting we would hunt for days to find a candidate with a degree from a top university who worked for a top notch company who of course was considered priceless and absolutely worth contacting. Today however, we run a simple search on LinkedIn and find hundreds that match that exact profile. Or we run a quick search on Twitter for anybody discussing a specific keyword and we now have hundreds more to contact. But with only a set number of hours in a day, we just don’t have the bandwidth to contact everybody.”

So, this is what he looks for on people’s Twitter pages

“1. Tweets often (between 2-10 times per day is considered reasonable)
2. Has a healthy followers/following ratio
3. Has the biggest network
4. Keeps a healthy balance between personal and professional tweets
5. Doesn’t just update, but also responds to others and generally seems to get Twitter”

and on people’s Facebook pages

“1. Respects the overlap between their personal and professional lives
2. Updates often
3. Posts pictures of friends and family but keeps them pg-13
4. Keeps it non-controversial – doesn’t take extreme positions on sex, drugs, religion, politics or other topics that could cause an employer to be wary of hiring
5. Is a member of groups relevant to their profession”

and on blogs

“1. Has interesting things to say about their respective profession and industry
2. Provides glimpses into their life outside of work – family, friends, hobbies, etc.
3. Does not bad-mouth their current or previous employer
4. Provides links to their other social networking profiles
5. Includes a link to their current resume
6. Updates with new posts regularly
7. Keeps it non-controversial – minimal discussion of sex, politics, religion and other such controversial topics.
8. Is more genuine and honest
9. Has a blogroll with link to other interesting blogs”

If Facebook were a country…

…it would be the 5th most populous country in the world. So says a video released by Facebook. Facebook reached 200 million users last week, and to make it seem significant, they’ve decided to partner with charities like American Red Cross, World Wildlife Fund and the Women for Women International group to “make a difference.” How? By urging you to buying gifts (from the giftshop), which are just logo images of different charities, for your Facebook friends. A gift costs between 100-1000 credits, a dollar will buy you 100 credits. 

The team also introduced  www.facebook.com/facebookforgood, a page where users can share how Facebook has helped make a difference in this world – examples: helped find missing kids, played matchmaker, reunited mother and lost son, etc. 

Out of the 200 million users, 967 people have joined or become “fans” of the Facebookforgood page. I wonder how many gifts they’ve sold.

Top 3 women twitterers on wefollow.com

I was exploring wefollow.com, a Twitter directory, and found the top three twitterers under the category named “women.” Here they are. 

Twitter.com/eMom, 19651 followers. She calls herself a serial entrepreneur and an adorkable web 2.0 lover. Most of her tweets are messages to other women about business ideas, social media and random internet stuff. Her latest tweet – “From Sparkplug CEO: Uncle Sam can help you Find Opportunity in Today’s Economy: Business.gov .. http://tinyurl.com/d796vv”

Twitter.com/JessCox 17,642 followers. She is a media student and mostly posts links to funny videos. “Think of me as a young Guy Kawasaki with breasts (or not!),” she says, on her profile. Has not twittered since the last ten days. Her latest tweet – “Check out http://wefollow.com/ – great way to find new people to follow (and you can add yourself too)”

Twitter.com/margaretcho 17,219 followers. She is a comedian, musician and an actress. She twitters about her music projects, and her hair. Her latest tweet – “And my hair is gonna be so awesome thanks to love love lovely judd minter”

Explained: Media’s obsession with Twitter.

 

pic: courtesy Internet's Dairy, flickr.com

Mike Elgan from Computerworld is a cool guy, because he has organized the media’s inexplicable interest in Twitter into stages. In his blog post, “The 6 stages of Twitter media coverage hell.” The stages are 1.ignore, 2.dismiss, 3.introduce, 4.hype, 5.criticize, 6.ignore.

 

My favorite part of his post – “As the media labels, pigeonholes, stereotypes, lionizes, belittles and condescends to the people on Twitter, real people on Twitter remain pretty much everybody and anybody. As the media ignorantly mischaracterizes what happens on Twitter, and what people do with it, Twitter remains a service that people do an unfathomable number of things with.

In all the hype and counter-hype, it will be utterly forgotten that Twitter is nothing more than a service for sending messages that lots of people find useful.

Because people can involve Twitter in a huge number of activities, and can say anything, reporters looking for certain kinds of stories good or bad will always find what they’re looking for.”

He warns us that the we’re moving from stage 4 to 5. Won’t bother me, I’ll continue to Twitter. Hairflip. (Though I actually can’t do that because I have really short hair.)

I like Twitter

I like Twitter. I like Twitter because it’s instant and because the messages are so short. I like it because there are very smart people in the network, putting out useful information. I like it because  search.twitter.com is like a personalized version of the Google search. (I love all things Google, but I do think Twitter search is better.)

I have nothing against those who don’t like it, but I don’t get why people hate on it so much.

pic: courtesy Home Biss, flickr.com

 

 

During the last three days, I’ve had four people tell me they “hate Twitter.” Why? It’s not spam. It’s not like the Facebook newsfeed (I love Facebook, just using the example for argument’s sake), which lets you know what each of your friends has been upto. It does not urge you, every month, to update your profile or make new connections like Linkedin does.

It’s a straightforward way to connect with people. No pictures, videos, long messages. Just short sentences and links that you click on, if you are interested. If you don’t want to read about people walking their dogs or washing their hands, DON’T FOLLOW THEM. 

Ada Lovelace, one of the world’s first computer programmers.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. Ada Lovelace, I just learnt, was one of the world’s first computer programmers. She predicted the development of computer software, artificial intelligence and computer music.  An article on inventors.about.com says, “Ada Lovelace devised a method of using punchcards to calculate Bernoulli numbers, becoming the first computer programmer.” 

By the way, her dad was the poet Lord Byron and her mother, Anne Isabella, was a great mathematician, known as the “princess of parallelograms.” Ada’s mother made sure she – a girl- was educated in math and science, which was rare during in early ninteenth century.

So, to honor her, thousands of bloggers have pledged to blog about a woman who, according to them, contributes to technology or is creative with how she uses technology. Bloggers must registerand submit their posts at http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDaymmm. Plegde Bank will publish all the blog posts.