The Entrepreneurs at Twitter: Building a Brand, a Social Tool or a Tech Powerhouse?
The Entrepreneurs at Twitter: Building a Brand, a Social Tool or a Tech Powerhouse?
Summary
Proclaimed as the hottest company since Google and Facebook, Twitter introduced a revolutionary micro-blogging service in 2006 that allowed users to spread and share short messages of 140 characters (“tweets”) with friends and strangers subscribing to follow their communication flow (as so called “followers”) in order to find out what is happening right now from any point of the globe.
Raising a total of US$ 155 million from investors without generating a single cent in profit or return on investment, Twitter’s founders Evan Williams, Christopher Isaac “Biz” Stone and Jack Dorsey relied essentially on their investors’ patience and goodwill while they were building the best product, technology and company possible…for free.
What started as the bright idea of its founders has slowly but surely developed to an unexploited business opportunity Twitter as a very trendy social tool has to monetize on. The notion that when a service is of value, it should also have a value and charge for this value was more or less ignored or remained in the background. Recognizing the importance of Twitter’s service to its users, endless possibilities arise how Twitter can capitalize on its popularity considering the 24 million registered Twitter users by the end of 2009 making up a technologically savvy and broadly interested user base allowing for special targeting with opt-in options and high interactivity levels as well as high levels of attention and reach.
Twitter’s marketing approach to date has been that of evangelism or word-of-mouth marketing with viral components, supported by extensive media coverage. Considering Twitter’s declining user base in the last quarter of 2009, this obviously wasn’t enough. Twitter has to expand its marketing and branding efforts to increase its publicity by means of embracing community, interactive and digital marketing.
Twitter has to discover and implement
Summary
Proclaimed as the hottest company since Google and Facebook, Twitter introduced a revolutionary micro-blogging service in 2006 that allowed users to spread and share short messages of 140 characters (“tweets”) with friends and strangers subscribing to follow their communication flow (as so called “followers”) in order to find out what is happening right now from any point of the globe.
Raising a total of US$ 155 million from investors without generating a single cent in profit or return on investment, Twitter’s founders Evan Williams, Christopher Isaac “Biz” Stone and Jack Dorsey relied essentially on their investors’ patience and goodwill while they were building the best product, technology and company possible…for free.
What started as the bright idea of its founders has slowly but surely developed to an unexploited business opportunity Twitter as a very trendy social tool has to monetize on. The notion that when a service is of value, it should also have a value and charge for this value was more or less ignored or remained in the background. Recognizing the importance of Twitter’s service to its users, endless possibilities arise how Twitter can capitalize on its popularity considering the 24 million registered Twitter users by the end of 2009 making up a technologically savvy and broadly interested user base allowing for special targeting with opt-in options and high interactivity levels as well as high levels of attention and reach.
Twitter’s marketing approach to date has been that of evangelism or word-of-mouth marketing with viral components, supported by extensive media coverage. Considering Twitter’s declining user base in the last quarter of 2009, this obviously wasn’t enough. Twitter has to expand its marketing and branding efforts to increase its publicity by means of embracing community, interactive and digital marketing.
Twitter has to discover and implement