14 January 2009 | Author: R. Falconer SEO Consultant
Since its launch in July 2006, social networking and microblogging site Twitter's early adopters have generally been of a slightly geeky persuasion. Attempting to explain what Twitter does to people who don't use it can result in blank or even mocking looks. Well, now it appears that British comedians Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross could be about to give Twitter the boost it needs to hit the mainstream.
During the American election last year, Barack Obama used various forms of social media to boost his online profile. He quickly became the most "followed" Twitter user. The publicity for the site was good but not as good as it could have been had Barack Obama actually been using Twitter himself rather than having his public relations team do it.
In comparison is the tale of Jonathan Ross was, who was suspended from the BBC following a now infamous radio show where he and Russell Brand left obscene messages on Andrew Sachs' answer machine.
During his time off, Ross has been introduced to Twitter by his friend, full time geek and dedicated tweeter, Stephen Fry. Fry and Ross are using the service as it was intended, regularly tweeting their personal thoughts to their followers. There is a huge difference between this and the way Obama's staff use Twitter.
It is clear that Fry and Ross are both hopelessly addicted. Fry regularly posts from mobile devices and various online applications using the Twitter API. Ross describes himself as the "Number One Twitter Detective", an Alexander McCall Smith tinged reference to his habit of finding out whether other celebrity Twitter users are real users or "Fakelebrities".
Stephen Fry is one of the guests on Ross' show, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, on the 23 January. The chat show has been off air for almost 3 months but his comeback show is sure to command not only a large viewing audience but the attention of online and offline media.
By promoting Twitter to other celebrities, Fry and Ross could start a snowball of tweeting. As more celebrities become involved, traditional media will become more interested meaning huge amounts of publicity for Twitter.
But will they talk about their love of Twitter? It's possible - likely even. And they'll get huge respect if they can do it in a way that manages to avoid those blank and mocking looks.
Presuming that Twitter's infrastructure holds up (it has had problems in the past), should Twitter go mainstream, where will it go from there? In common with Facebook and various other "Web 2.0" applications and social networks, Twitter is developing a large user base but isn't actually making any money and doesn't have a clear plan of how to start. Someone needs to figure out how to turn such huge amounts of traffic into cash. The person who figures out how to do it should become very rich indeed.
Google was in a similar situation up until the year 2000. The internet bubble had burst and funders were keen for Google to start making a profit from their popular service. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't want to simply use ugly banner advertising as other search engines were doing. They knew there must be a better way but didn't quite know what it was. That year they copied Overture's advertising model to develop their now ubiquitous Adwords system of advertising. The rest, as they say, is history. Can social media sites repeat that history?
Twitter to go mainstream, Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry set the date
Since its launch in July 2006, social networking and microblogging site Twitter's early adopters have generally been of a slightly geeky persuasion. Attempting to explain what Twitter does to people who don't use it can result in blank or even mocking looks. Well, now it appears that British comedians Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross could be about to give Twitter the boost it needs to hit the mainstream.During the American election last year, Barack Obama used various forms of social media to boost his online profile. He quickly became the most "followed" Twitter user. The publicity for the site was good but not as good as it could have been had Barack Obama actually been using Twitter himself rather than having his public relations team do it.
In comparison is the tale of Jonathan Ross was, who was suspended from the BBC following a now infamous radio show where he and Russell Brand left obscene messages on Andrew Sachs' answer machine.
During his time off, Ross has been introduced to Twitter by his friend, full time geek and dedicated tweeter, Stephen Fry. Fry and Ross are using the service as it was intended, regularly tweeting their personal thoughts to their followers. There is a huge difference between this and the way Obama's staff use Twitter.
It is clear that Fry and Ross are both hopelessly addicted. Fry regularly posts from mobile devices and various online applications using the Twitter API. Ross describes himself as the "Number One Twitter Detective", an Alexander McCall Smith tinged reference to his habit of finding out whether other celebrity Twitter users are real users or "Fakelebrities".
Stephen Fry is one of the guests on Ross' show, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, on the 23 January. The chat show has been off air for almost 3 months but his comeback show is sure to command not only a large viewing audience but the attention of online and offline media.
By promoting Twitter to other celebrities, Fry and Ross could start a snowball of tweeting. As more celebrities become involved, traditional media will become more interested meaning huge amounts of publicity for Twitter.
But will they talk about their love of Twitter? It's possible - likely even. And they'll get huge respect if they can do it in a way that manages to avoid those blank and mocking looks.
Presuming that Twitter's infrastructure holds up (it has had problems in the past), should Twitter go mainstream, where will it go from there? In common with Facebook and various other "Web 2.0" applications and social networks, Twitter is developing a large user base but isn't actually making any money and doesn't have a clear plan of how to start. Someone needs to figure out how to turn such huge amounts of traffic into cash. The person who figures out how to do it should become very rich indeed.
Google was in a similar situation up until the year 2000. The internet bubble had burst and funders were keen for Google to start making a profit from their popular service. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't want to simply use ugly banner advertising as other search engines were doing. They knew there must be a better way but didn't quite know what it was. That year they copied Overture's advertising model to develop their now ubiquitous Adwords system of advertising. The rest, as they say, is history. Can social media sites repeat that history?
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