Promoted Tweets debut
The big news on Twitter is Promoted Tweets. These are sponsored tweets that appear in the Twitter Search results.
Twitter announced Sponsored Tweets and its charter sponsor list (Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America) in April. More recently, Twitter altered its terms of service to ban the Twitter platforms and third parties from embedding sponsored tweets into users' tweet streams. Twitter shared this rationale:
First, third party ad networks are not necessarily looking to preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created. They may optimize for either market share or short-term revenue at the expense of the long-term health of the Twitter platform. For example, a third party ad network may seek to maximize ad impressions and click through rates even if it leads to a net decrease in Twitter use due to user dissatisfaction. Secondly, the basis for building a lasting advertising network that benefits users should be innovation, not near-term monetization.
UnFacebooks and user control
Partly as a response to concerns about Facebook's privacy missteps, a number of alternative social networks are attracting attention. From tech blogs to Elle.com, the UnFacebooks are a popular story. Of course Orkut, MySpace, and Friendster are also trying to capitalize on Facebook's stumbles. But here are some new sites getting play:
Diaspora: Billing itself as "an open source personal web service that will put individuals in control of their data," Diaspora is the brainchild of four NYU students and has raised more than 20 times its initial funding goal. The idea behind Diaspora is essentially opt-in, versus the major social sites' opt-out approach. It is working feverishly to get everything going this summer. A word from the founders:
Pip.io lets users define different "rooms" of people that they want to share information with. Users can also define if they want one- or two-way communications with their rooms.
A self-described "social operating system," Pip.io is clearly trying to be more than a social net. When you visit, make sure you are using Firefox or Chrome, not MSIE.
Story of My Life is a new platform enabling members to tell stories in a variety of media and make them private or public. I love the idea of letting more people tell the stories of their lives. And not just in words.
Does it sound like a blog platform to you? Yes, but the community features make it more than that. And it's really more about defined stories than a stream of consciousness.
<< Previous page | Next page >>
