SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. Last week’s poll question: With the rise of location-based platforms such as Foursquare and Gowalla, has Twitter become old hat? The new and shiny has worn off Twitter, but it’s still useful — 35.10% Perish the thought; Twitter is still very viable — 35.10% Foursquare? Gowalla? What are those? — 17.31% Yawn. Twitter is yesterday’s news — 12.50% On one hand, the new and shiny has worn off Twitter, but it is reinventing itself to maintain relevance. For example, the company recently announced a revenue model based on advertising. For the first time, Twitter has a chance to become profitable (at least to actually earn revenue). Twitter is also entering the geo-location craze with a new feature called Points of Interest . It is orienting itself to be used ubiquitously in a mobile environment. In his keynote at the recent Twitter developer conference, Chirp , company CEO Evan Williams said that as of today, only 37% of active users use Twitter on their mobile devices. He wants to see that number rise to 100%. Speaking of use, there are more than 55 million new tweets created each day, and more than 600 million search queries per day. Finally, Twitter is putting lots of emphasis on building out and shoring up its infrastructure in order to handle the growth. I won’t say that gone are the days of the “fail whale,” but the platform does seem to be much more stable than in the past. Williams says that “Twitter is evolving. The goal is to serve users. There is much left to invent.” I believe Twitter’s heyday has not yet passed. It will be with us for a long time to come. Paul Chaney is an Internet marketing consultant and speaker on the topic of social media, author of “The Digital Handshake” and a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board .
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Twitter is evolving and still relevant
SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social-media practices and issues. Last week’s poll question: Are you currently using location-based social networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla or MyTown? I haven’t started using them, and I don’t plan to. 43.84% I haven’t started using them, but I’m interested. 25.36% Yes, I regularly check in to places I go. 15.94% I’m using them, but not frequently. 14.86% I’m somewhat taken aback by the strong response from those who say they have no plan to use location-based social networks such as Foursquare or Gowalla. It causes me to wonder if the response is based on a lack of knowledge about their use in a business context, whether the respondents represent more of a business-to-business orientation, or whether it’s a lack of interest in newer forms of social networking altogether — or none of the above. My take on these new platforms is that they can have great relevance for retail-oriented bricks-and-mortar businesses, and perhaps that’s stating the obvious. Less apparent are the soon-coming benefits to using geolocation, many of which have yet to be discerned. As participation increases and people adapt the use of these apps to better suit their needs, I expect to see more benefits accrue, within the retail and business-to-business spaces. As Daniel Ionescu puts it : “Facebook wants to know, ‘What’s on your mind?’ Twitter asks, ‘What’s happening?’ But that’s getting old already. The burning question for the next wave of social networking is, ‘Where are you?’” We don’t yet know the impact of that question on business, but I’m betting it’s significant. Perhaps a good follow-up question to the one above should be, “What business benefits do you see location-based social networks providing?” Why don’t you go ahead and respond now by leaving a comment. Paul Chaney is the Internet marketing director for Bizzuka , author of “The Digital Handshake,” and a member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board .
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Poll: Readers skeptical on use of location-based social networks