Tag: mashable
Twitter Emerging as Online Video Power Broker [STATS]
by Ranju Chaudhary on May.26, 2010, under Latest Web Technologies, Trends, What's Happening?
New stats we’ve just been shown by video measurement company TubeMogul show that Twitter is quickly growing as a top referrer for web video traffic, far outpacing Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Bing.
Further, when it comes to getting users to watch videos, users who discovered a video via Twitter
tend to stay around longer, too. In fact, these users will view a video for an average of just over two minutes.
In a quick Twitter poll, we tried to ascertain the reasons for Twitter’s emergence as a video-sharing tool. From what we can tell, people are using Twitter to connect not just to their real-world friends, but also to specific interests. Hence, they’re finding content that’s directly related to those interests, content that is more personally relevant and, for the individual, more watchable. Simply put, for video discovery, Twitter is “more tuned to my tastes,” in the words of one user.
It might also have something to do with the sheer volume of content and the ease of spreading that content around via retweets. One user said most of his video recommendations were via Twitter, and another said he was less likely to tune out a video if multiple friends retweeted it.
However you want to slice it, though, Twitter is a huge referral source for online video. Video
blogging pioneer Steve Garfield, who literally wrote the book on web video, told us, “Twitter is my #1 recomendation engine for finding videos.”
Do you tend to find good videos from your Twitter stream? Are they more interesting or more relevant to you than the videos you’d find on Facebook or from random browsing elsewhere online?
Twitter to Eliminate Third-Party Ads in User Timelines
by Ranju Chaudhary on May.25, 2010, under What's Happening?
Twitter has announced an imminent cease and desist for third-party Twitter ad networks like Sponsored Tweets and Ad.ly who insert advertisements into user timelines (update: see our follow-up coverage – Twitter’s Ad Crackdown Alienates Developers… Again).
In a blog post, the company indicates that it has updated its Terms of Service, writing, “We will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.”
The move is meant to preserve “the integrity and relevance of the timeline,” according to Twitter. Of course, it also means that Twitter’s own advertising offering — Promoted Tweets — will no longer have ad competition within the stream from third-party ad networks.
To clarify, Twitter’s decision only targets those that insert paid-for-tweets into user streams, and does not affect applications that show ads around Twitter timelines.
Twitter explains its decision citing two key reasons. “First, third-party ad networks are not necessarily looking to preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created … Secondly, the basis for building a lasting advertising network that benefits users should be innovation, not near-term monetization.”
Twitter also encourages developers to leverage the business opportunities that will be available once Annotations launches, suggesting that “Twitter clients could begin to differentiate on their ability to service different data-rich verticals like Finance or Entertainment.”
Today’s news is likely to garner mixed reactions from users, and reignite developer angst about Twitter. Obviously the third-party ad networks that have built their business models around monetizing in-stream tweets will be displeased with the news, but we can imagine that users confused by the ads in timelines will welcome the change.
