News & Notes

Sarah Worsham / Mar 16, 2010

Top Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Mar 16, 2010

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While Twitter promotes their open developer platform, Social Times has confirmed a number of new deals which involve 6 figure monthly fees for access to the Twitter stream. Both Google and Bing recently announced deals which involve the exchange of access to the public stream for significant sums of money, yet it wasn’t clear that this practice continued on down the line (of smaller developers). While the stream may appear free, if you consume too much information from Twitter, you will be billed. – Twitter Charging More Companies For Access To Firehose (Social Times)

To be clear, when the firehose is mentioned, direct access to the full stream from Twitter’s API is what they’re really talking about. If you use a program other than Twitter’s website to Tweet, you’re using the API, which allows programmers to tap into Twitter’s services. The full stream of data coming from Twitter is very valuable for knowing what’s going on in real time. Twitter puts limits on the amount of data that you’re allowed to access through the API unless you pay a fee to get the full stream. Due to the value of this data, it makes business sense for Twitter to charge for it.

Sarah Worsham / Mar 15, 2010

Sency Adds 4 New Language Search Engines

Real time search engine, Sency, who we’ve reviewed previously, just launched 4 international search engines to help users browse real time content in other languages. The real time web is alive – there are over 50 million status updates posted to Twitter every day. With all of these updates, a slew of real time search engines have launched in an effort to help users see what is being said right now.
[Read more…] about Sency Adds 4 New Language Search Engines

Sarah Worsham / Mar 15, 2010

Top Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Mar 15, 2010

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With one or two exceptions (most notably Dell, which has claimed several million dollars in revenue from Twitter), few businesses have used Twitter to drive significant sales. Studying the Twitter profiles of some major UK online retailers and analysing available data suggests that, as far as business is concerned,Twitter is yet to live up to its hype.

The ‘wrong kind’ of followers, low follower numbers and a general disinterest in e-commerce sites on Twitter has meant that so far Twitter is far from proven as an effective tool for business. – Is Twitter any use for retailers? (Econsultancy)

Twitter’s use by business (or any use, really) is relatively new. It took companies several years to use the web for commerce too. I think it is possible for retailers to effectively use Twitter, but it needs to be part of an overall digital strategy. And they need to engage a community that’s interested in a two-way conversation. My question would be what type of other presences do the retailers in the article have? Do they just a website or are they engaging their customers elsewhere?

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