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  • The Paradox of Consumer Choice
    A few years ago I read a book called The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More by Barry Schwartz. His anecdotes were insightful and pointed to truths about the amount of choice the free market has laid on us as consumers. Of course free markets and consumer choice should be good things, but there are certainly experiences I have had where the overwhelming sense of having too many options made it difficult to actually make a decision. I related to much of what the book was saying, particularly with the experience of picking out a DVD to watch from my massive collection. I recall staring at a wall of DVDs and having the most difficult time deciding what to watch. The decision-making process when faced with so many good choices was simply immobilizing.  
  • The Future of PC and Mobile Processors

    I've spent a lot of time with a number of hardware manufacturers recently, trying to get a glimpse into the next generation of processors and the ways in which they'll impact future gadgets and PCs. In all my meetings, one term has arisen time and again: SOC, or system-on-a-chip.

    Traditionally, chips have been created independently and then coupled together to provide multiple computing features. For example, a manufacturer would create a core processor like an Intel Centrino with a built-in Wi-Fi radio, and then attach that to a systems board, perhaps linking it together with a separate graphics co-processor, in order to deliver enhanced PC graphics. Another might take an ARM core processor and then add on additional features like extended graphics to enhance device functionality.

  • Apple's iPad: Live up the Hype? It Will....
    It was interesting to hear all the chatter after last week's iPad launch. Most reactions I heard from other analysts and media were lukewarm at best...which was what I expected. If you think about it, how can anything live up to the kind of hype leading up to this launch? But there was a lot missed in the media about the event and the product that I hope to share in order to maintain our perspective on not only the iPad but on Apple and their products.  
  • Innovation Abounds - CES 2010 Post Show Analysis

    This year's CES was very interesting. I had felt for the past few years that CES was sorely lacking in the innovation department. But this year it looks like things have changed in the technology industry. Technology companies have realized that to reach the consumer the pace of innovation needs to accelerate, and this year's CES was a start in that direction.  Several things stuck out that I'd like to highlight:  

Does Twitter have a Future

Written by Ben Bajarin Wednesday, 19 August 2009 15:16

Twitter (or Tweeter as my friends in LA call it) has been such a hot topic lately I thought it would be good to provide a quick analysis of the service and share a little of our thoughts on what the future for Twitter may be.

It seems that Twitter has evolved to be much more than it set out to be. The initial elevator pitch by company founders to investors was that Twitter would be a service where people could say what they were up to in 140 characters or less.  It was meant to be that simple, yet it has evolved into something much bigger than that. 

 

 

I’ve racked my brain and have trouble coming up with any really good reasons for “regular Joes” off the street to be posting tweets.  In fact one of the first social experiments I tried with a test bed of college students and friends was to have everyone use the service regularly in order to answer the question “why should we care what everyone is doing all the time.”   The answer was we didn’t.   At the end of the experiment it was clear that it was interesting for a short amount of time but then it became too much work.

Posts often call Twitter a service for narcissists which may not be too far from the truth for those “regular Joes.”  However for those with something to market, and yes that can often be yourself, the service can be greatly useful.

The value of Twitter from a marketing standpoint is now slowly beginning to be understood and a great deal of experimentation is happening, which is good.   Ashton’ Kutcher’s challenge with CNN brought more of this to light, and his comments at the Fortune conference cemented his view on Twitter being used for marketing.  According to a Harris Interactive Poll 45% of advertisers believe Twitter is still in its infancy and will grow exponentially in the next few years.  According to the same poll only 12% of consumers say the same, while 69% of consumers say they don't know enough about Twitter to have an opinion.

So what will come of Twitter? When I ask others in casual conversations with people who use the service they mention the most valuable way they use Twitter is for news aggregation.   Rarely do I hear of people using it to alert others of what they are doing. 

Twitter then is simply a useful tool to aggregate data you are interested in.   For some people, that may often be what their friends are doing, however those who have the most to gain for developing a following among the masses are the news outlets, companies of interest, public figures, celebrities or artists of interest, etc.  

One of the foremost marketing challenges is in trying to get above the buzz to compete for the consumers eyes and ears.   Opt-In emails, websites, TV, radio, billboards, magazines and more have all been employed in an attempt to keep and maintain a consumer’s interest.   The music industry, for example, spends hundreds of thousands and often millions of dollars in the  attempt to remind fans of a particular artist about this person’s music or an artist’s new album. Imagine, however, if an artist had a following of half a million people on Twitter. With one sentence they could instantly tell their fans to go to their website and sample the music from their new album so they could pre-order it. This would now allow the artist to engage with their fans in new ways and use it to their benefit.   Same thing could happen when an author publishes a new book. Imagine if he used Twitter to crowd source ideas and involve his followers in the writing process.   Same thing could go for actors looking to promote a new movie or companies looking to promote new products. 

Twitter’s challenge first and foremost will be how to make money off those who have much to gain from using Twitter for marketing purposes.  Twitter is going to have to develop a compelling reason for companies to spend valuable marketing dollars in their ecosystem.

I suspect that whether Twitter solves their business model problem or not smart people have observed the marketing power of tools that allow people to engage with them in new and creative ways.  Harnessing these tools wisely is where the strategy comes in to play. 

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