September, 2009 – David Hughes

29 September 2009

Monetising Twitter Trending Topics

I don’t like or normally use the term “monetise”, but it is the big question hanging over Twitter; how are they gonna make money from this thing?

We saw last week that Twitter have secured another found of funding described as “significant”, and so we assume that at some point these investors are going to want to see a return.

Many ideas for how Twitter might monetise the service have been put forward: paid accounts, premium accounts for brands and companies, advertising on the page, advertising in Tweets etc. But I have another thought about how Twitter might be planning to integrate advertising or paid content.

In the sidebar of the of a Twitter user’s homepage is a trending topics panel which shows the topics, keywords or hashtags being tweeted about most at that point in time. Clicking on one of these takes you to a search for that term or keywords which can be updated as new tweets appear.

Clicking on the trending topic ‘iPhone’ this morning I went to the usual list of tweets but then noticed this new, at least to me, content at the top explaining why ‘iPhone’ was a trending topic:

I’d not really got why Twitter had added trending topics to the site as it just seemed to be a tool for spammers to piggy back upon, but once you see this explanatory content it starts to make a little more sense. I can see this easily becoming advertising (Google keywords anybody?) or paid for content: each use of the word iPhone could be a link to Apple.com for example. This would allow Twitter to start to generate revenue from the service and without a negative impact on the user experience. Interesting…

Of course this would make trending topics even more of a spam magnet and doesn’t address the large number of users accessing Twitter via other clients and applications, but it does point to a potential approach for Twitter to start making money.

What do you think?

28 September 2009

Dedicated to the City

I was talking with a friend recently about cities; their similarities, their differences and what defines them. It struck me that cities are so much more than places and people; cities themselves have their own character and personality.

It is this character, this personality that makes a city almost like a person. As with people you might get on with that personality or you might not.

Sometimes a city will grow on you, sometimes you know you will never like a city and sometimes it will be love at first sight.

Over the last few years I have definitely realised I am a city person, not that I don’t love the country and I will always love the coast, but cities and me we have an understanding.

In the words of Underworld Mmm Skyscraper I Love You.

11 September 2009

9/11

On this day my thoughts return to the events of September 11 2001. This year they are more sharply focussed having recently returned from my first trip to New York.

libbywtc-247x300

I’m still left open mouthed and shocked every time I see footage of the planes hitting the towers and the buildings collapse. When I visited Ground Zero I was surprised that I didn’t feel more emotional. I’d expected to be moved by the site, but instead it just felt like a large building site; which amazingly eight years later it still is. What is amazing is just how big an area it is, and that so few of the surrounding buildings were destroyed.

I’m still undecided how I feel about the new towers that will, one day, be built there. Part of me feels that new towers must be built to show the terrorists they did not win, but another part of me feels that with so many lives having been lost at Ground Zero the site should become a memorial.

I did have one moment in New York that really brought 9/11 back to me. I was standing the lobby of my hotel when a classic American fire truck roared past with its sirens blaring trailing a huge American flag. It made me think of similar footage I’d seen of the fire crews rushing to the towers and of course how many of them died there as well. It sent the hairs in back of my neck on end and a shiver down my spine.

My thoughts today are with the familes of those that lost loved ones.

The photo was taken by a friend from American Express at 6 am on 9/11. She was leaving for work in the World Finance Centre, next door to the World Trade Centre, and was struck by how beautiful the towers looked.