EnglishCharlotte McEleny
12th December 2011
New Media Age
new media age surveyed a cross section of the industry for their thoughts on the new Twitter, with many hailing it as a major improvement for brands.
Simon Mansell, CEO, TBG Digital:
“With 100m+ users logging in every month and 50m users logging in every day, Twitter’s launch of brand pages is an exciting development for us because the user base is active and engaged in the same way that Facebook users are.
“We do believe, however, that the users are still early adopters, slightly younger, more affluent and a lot of ‘digerati’ types – but that’s the audience a lot of brands want. This, together with its new self-serve advertising tools, will see TBG Digital focus more on Twitter rather than Google+.
“Its main challenge is to keep it simple. At the moment, its platform and ad products are quite complicated and could stop it scaling in revenue as fast as it needs to.”
Alex Pearmain, head of social media at O2
“Overall, I think it’s a clear drive to move ever further into being a discovery hub for near-live contextual information: opinions on the sports and entertainment you’re watching, breaking news events, celebrity access etc. I think it makes sense and it differentiates it from Facebook.
“The most interesting aspect, though, is to launch ‘new’ Twitter on mobile first. First, this says a lot about what fuels Twitter, but second, it’s a bold move. Lots of people say that mobile is their most important channel, but few dare defy the desktop and actually walk the walk.”
Amy Kean, director of social media at Havas Media:
“One of the biggest perceived restrictions for brands on social networks has been creativity. Applications aside, arguably not since the almost blank canvases of MySpace has a social network been creatively flexible enough to really let loose with a big idea. Personalisation on a social network, however limited, is a big thing for brands. Literally anything that we can use to set ourselves apart from the competition is a huge opportunity.
“This is why I love the small steps Twitter is taking to enable brands to say more about themselves from a profile perspective, and it’s confident enough to not give us too much. This new type of limited creativity is making us work harder creatively and brands like Betfair, Skittles and even Arena Flowers have shown us how you can be truly creative with 140 characters.
“Another issue previously with brands’ Twitter pages is that (particularly for a customer service account) what consumers are initially greeted with is a page filled with apologies or requests for details to enable direct messaging. It is not a great first impression. This new layout allows brands to tell a much richer story about why they’re there and what you can expect from this interaction, rather than a stream of negative comments. A great improvement in my opinion.”
Richard Moynihan, community and social media manager, Metro newspaper:
“I like the direction Twitter’s heading in with ‘new’ Twitter. It makes complete sense for it to go after new users who don’t necessarily want to broadcast non-stop via the site but do want to get the latest news or follow what other people are saying.
“The Discover tab’s the most exciting thing for me. When it launched Trends, Twitter started setting the news agenda and with hashtags, it steers the conversation. Within the Discover page there are Stories, in which Twitter’s upped the ante and made a big step towards becoming a personalised news service, which is great for users and news publishers. People will see more relevant stories, which means more traffic for news websites. It’ll also bring a bigger potential audience, as the site’s more appealing now to lurkers, who prefer to browse instead of broadcast.
“Twitter’s an extremely useful tool for generating discussion between news providers and their audiences, democratising news and giving people a say on the issues significant to them. These changes are a sensible and exciting direction for Twitter to head in.”