Confessions of a Twitter sceptic

Heretical as it may seem, I confess... I am a twitter sceptic.  I have a twitter account (@rosstmw if you feel the need to follow me), a few followers and a few trial tweets.  I've tried, I really have.  I have even twittered about my efforts.  I know that it seems to go against all current wisdom, but I just cant get as enthused about Twitter as I can about many other areas of the social space. 

The rise of Twitter seems inexorable. Recent figures show a 974 per cent increase in Twitter traffic over the past year, shooting the website from the 2,953rd most visited site among UK users to the 291st most visited by mid-January this year. Industry analysts say that more than 2.25 million “tweets” – Twitter messages – are now posted every day worldwide. (Telegraph 12 Feb 2009)

I understand that Twitter is an extension of our increasingly fragmented lives, our insatiable need to do everything faster, shorter and more immediately.  I think it can offer genuine insights and opportunities to businesses (Tweetscan is a good place to start for businesses interested in seeing what their customers are Twittering about them), by offering another customer support channel, or as a new channel to communicate relevant offers or news.  But for me. as a consumer tool, it is still unfocused At a seminar with Seth Godin yesterday, some of the audience were twittering their updates as he spoke.  Is this really necessary? What is it that was so urgent that it had to be shared it before the seminar was even over?

So, one of my main problems with Twitter is that it is indiscriminate.  I have Facebook for my friends, and I will add content to that as appropriate to that type of relationship, I have LinkedIn for my business life and contacts, and I add content and maintain relationships with that in mind.  So, who am I talking to when I twitter?  That is really at the core of my scepticism.  I like the idea of "micro updates" but I do think it needs to mature and find a more targeted space in our increasingly crowded web 2.0 lives where the tone and behaviours of twitterers can be adapted to suit their audiences.

But I havent given up yet, and if I do find Twitter enlightenment, then I promise to let you know (on this Blog!).

Fanverts and trumpets

I am a big fan of natural confecionery company sweets.  Not a big sweet fan myself, but as a parent of two smallish children, I know that the occasional sweet can reduce the overall quantity of "Are we  there yet?" questions on a long journey, and the fact that they are made from all natural ingredients seems to reduce my guilt at feeding my children sweets in the first place.

But more than that, I love the adverts. My colleagues around me are sick to death of the incessant refrain of "Trumpets". But I do have a couple of important questions:

1. Was the ability of fans to create their own versions of the advert an explicit part of the creative brief given to the agency or part of the perceived value of the chosen route?  I would love to think that this is the case: the ads are perfect for this - simple scenes, simple script and soundtrack, simple animation, and the easy access to the main props-sweets!  I can count more than 200 tributes to the "Trumpets" ad alone (fanverts as I know them) on Youtube alone,

2. My second question is more of a complaint. Why does the experience stop there?  The website is really quite flat and dull, and hardly references the ads at all.  The characters havent been taken any further into any other spaces online. The C'Mons from the Vauxhall ads were a great example of how characters can be brought to life online way beyond the confines of the 30 second ad, and it feels like an opportunity to extend the campaign has been missed.  So  far...

Nabaztag - not quite the future

I have been spending much time recently trying to discern future trends in digital marketing, in order to plan and resource our research efforts.  One of the themes that I see is the development of tools and products to allow people to interact with digital content away from the traditional screen and keyboard model.  Think of things like bluetooth bus shelters, touch screens in stores, Nike+ and my beloved iPhone.

One thing in particular struck me as interesting - the Nabaztag.  A Nabaztag is a wireless enabled box, shaped like a rabbit, whose main role in life if to access content from the web and read it back to its owner. More than this, it can also take simple voice commands, and can recognise RFID tags, so it can see your keys or a book and use these to perform some action.  The possibilities are endless - waking you up to a choice of RSS feeds rather than Radio 4, reminding you to take your pills at a certain time of the day, reading out emails to Granny who doesnt know how to use a pc etc etc.

And so, thanks to Amazon, our very own research Nabaztag arrived today.  So far, so excited.  First step, give it a name.  Fluffy seems suitably ironic since it is made of smooth white plastic.  However, given the rabbit has only a single button, it is the most fiendishly complex thing to set up that I have ever encountered.  Click here for the full instructions, but trust me, it is now back in the box and heading back to Amazon.

So, like so many first generation products, there is a lot still to do to before it can achieve its full potential, but I am sure that other devices cant be far behind and the impact of these is going to be significant.