[en]

Twitter had a “big” press conference yesterday evening. They sent out invitations with little explanation of what was about to be revealed. The invitees felt the excitement in the air, the secret was filling the room and the Twitter employees giddily smiled, barely containing the secret.

Twitter was a flurry of tweets, even people (like me) who were not present in the conference were hanging from every tweet from TechCrunch and others talking about what was going on in the event. First they showed a little egg, obvious allegory to the twitter bird being born (or reborn as the case was), and blog writers present wrote every word coming out of Twitter’s Evan Williams, Jason Goldman and Kevin Cheng.

Little by little the secret came out… Twitter has a new interface!

Twitter has been working for a while in a new two paned interface that allows for seeing pictures and watching videos embedded in your tweets. It is very similar to the Twitter interface available in the iPad app, just set up directly in the official Twitter site. Some people felt this wasn’t such a big announcement, but lets just consider this for a bit.

A question came in the room about Twitter looking more like Facebook, to which Keving Cheng responded clearly that Twitter is Twitter and it is about the tweets. The direction Twitter is taking is becoming more of a news stream, rather than falling under the “Social Network” classification.

Twitter has become a source of information, most people are still trying to figure it out and understand how such a simple thing can be a source of information. My opinion is that this new change will effectively make that clearer. Beyond the images and videos, twitter’s second pane will provide more information to make it clear for new users what twitter is about. The right  pane will show related items, mentions, and other streams of information, more like what some of the Twitter applications and clients expert users are accustomed.

Additionally, Twitter has stated that the new Twitter will be faster and more stable, unlike the several “happy Blue Whale” sightings we’ve had recently.

See the video about the new Twitter here: Twitter’s New Interface or below:

So, what do you think? Is Twitter’s new interface really a big announcement? Do you think this is a great improvement?

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

[es]

Para muchos usuarios de internet, es evidente que en México se utilizan los medios sociales. Facebook, hi5, Fotolog y Twitter. Aunque muchas empresas siguen creyendo que los medios sociales son algo que en México no tiene importancia o efecto, cada vez es más notorio que se equivocan. Para ejemplo, con la reciente victoria de México sobre Francia en el mundial (2-0 por si se les había olvidado), se pudo observar inmediatamente la rección de los mexicanos en Twitter, favor de ver este gráfico para mejor ejemplo:

Se puede observar que en los “trending topics” (temas tendencia) aparecen claramente “Mexico Cabrones”, “Gano Mexico” y “Pinche Arbitro”. Según algunos expertos, se requiere apróximadamente 1700 tweets en al menos 700 usuarios para que un texto/tema logre aparecer en la página de inicio de Twitter. Si consideramos que aparte de estos tres temas (o frases repetidas al menos 1700 veces por aprox. 700 usuarios) habian otros 5 temas más con el mismo toque mexicano en twitter en ese momento, tenemos que aproximadamente 4,900 usuario en México “twitearon” luego de ver el partido, lo cual nos dice que al menos 4,900  personas tienen cuentas en twitter. Por supuesto eso no es un gran número, pero cabe considerar que no todos ponen atención a twitter de forma dedicada y que es un calculo llanero con intención de reducir el número para no exagerar, por ejemplo, si le damos a cada usuario en México al menos 3 seguidores, tenemos que al menos hay 14,700 usuarios.

En México, el número de usuarios de telefonía celular es muy elevado. La mayoría cuentan con algún tipo de plan de texto o email y una buena cantidad (usualmente jóvenes empresarios y gente con poder adquisitivo real), cuentan con teléfonos con acceso a medios sociales e internet. No es sorprendente que tantas firmas americanas y canadienses estén tan interesados en ingresar al mercado mexicano (y latino americano).

Por cierto, ciertos estudios (luego de investigar un poco más) ubican el número de usuarios de Twitter en México, para Agosto de 2009 en 8,500. Mi pequeño juego aritmético no esta tan equivocado.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

As soon as Bing came out and announced it, Google was not far behind. We last heard that Google was in the talks with Twitter and they have apparently closed the deal.

Currently, if you do any google search, you will find that for some results Twitter twits are already showing in the SERPs. More will be coming soon. Real time results is what the buzz is all about these days. Exposure will become much more sensitive and businesses need to keep learning as fast as the market evolves. Speaking of which, Google Wave is coming too and that has some people talking about revolutionizing the way we email and do internet in many ways (and a healthy dose of detractors, of course).

Getting back to Twitter in Google, this was mentioned in Google’s blog yesterday. See the blog post here: Google Blog.

Bing has been showing some improvements recently in regards to market share and seems to still be working out a deal with Yahoo. The marketshare war is still very hot, in spite of what most of us believed. Bing keeps kicking back, will this be it for Microsoft? Is this Microsoft’s retaliation for Google’s intrusion into the OS markets with Android and Chrome OS?

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

Bing Tweets - Twitter to show in Bing

Direct from Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, we receive news of the future in search. What is being called “real time search” which involves using data from Twitter, facebook and similar services to include information currently surging about a search. In this regard, Bing has taken a big step forward by securing a deal with Twitter to include Tweets in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

There is also a deal with Facebook, but details about this have not been provided.

Want to see the beta? See it here.

This change in search will mean that using social media will become more important than ever. You will be able to see twitter feeds related to a link directly from the search without having to visit the social site to get the details. This adds a new perspective as people will be actually talking live about a subject and those comments will be shown in real time while you search.

For marketing this has many implications, simply starting from developing new ways of promoting a service and the fact that exposure to bad press will be more than an uncomfortable reality. Companies who don’t take care of their clients or have disgruntled customers will now be exposed live and online.

We can easily imagine coming out of a retail store where we dealt with a more than unfriendly salesperson, pulling out the phone and immediately tweeting about the bad experience to let the world know. Every user online searching for that store or a product from that store will be immediately exposed to that tweet. This may or may not influence the other users’ decision to visit the store or buy online from it, but the store has no control over what is said. The only control may be giving good service and reasonable prices.

Another application for this new offering is related to what has been happening with microblogging services. Twitter has allowed for people to report events as they happen. Many important journalists have their twitter account and constantly tweet about new articles and things happening around. Now, the tweets will no longer be circumscribed to Twitter.com, anyone (even those who presently are twitterless) will be exposed to what people are saying about the subject and in time, the tendency will be to finally fall to the pressure and get an account in Twitter.

Its an interesting time to be online. The brave will establish themselves, the rest will follow. Where is your company today?

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

More about this from the blogosphere:

Ben Parr

Chris Crum

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

The secret to great marketing knowledge is great marketing research. Pretty much like every other marketing methodology available, Twitter is also sensitive to timing. As in social situations, timing is everything when it comes to twitter and when to publish links.

Time matters in Tweeter

One of the uses for Twitter is publishing links to your website or blog. Most people use automated tools to post their contents as soon as they become available, but, the disadvantage to this is that most people hardly ever look at the timing of their tweets.

There are particular hours of the day when the most amount of people will click on your tweet, regardless of the size of your following. One of the biggest disadvantages of twitter is that people don’t always get all the messages in the stream or your message gets lost into a massive invasion of people microblogging simultaneously. Just picture this, I post a tweet right now and at the same time, at least another 1,000 people do the same. Let’s say that those thousand are all being followed by a person, what will happen is that the posts to be seen will be the ones available exactly at the moment the person opens the twitter page. This is frozen until the person refreshes the page and then gets to see the most recent influx of tweets. Your tweet will only be seen if by any coincidence the person happens to refresh at the same moment your post is being, well, posted. Suffice to say, this doesn’t happen that often.

Just the best twitter page there is.

Another way to get attention is from the twitter main page, the search function which people frequently use to find the latest tweets about their favorite subjects or whatever has got into their mind at that time. Again, your tweet is competing with thousands tweeting at the same time as you and will only be seen for a few seconds on every search related to that tweets subject (by subject we mean the words in your post).

There are also moments in the day when certain words will be more successful than others, when you will get the biggest amount of exposure per tweet possible. Of course, this time varies depending on many factors, the key is to always experiment with this and see what time gives you the most amount of clicks and response to your tweet.

To track all this you can use URL shortening services like Bit.ly or Owl.ly where you can shorten your URL and get real time stats on the number of clicks.

With this, now go and begin hunting for the best time for your tweets. Happy hunting and let me know how it goes!

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

@mariocanamar

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

Is twitter an important part of our internet world? To most people, this is not even a question. Twitter has become such a phenomenon that everybody (and I mean, everybody) is using it. Don’t believe me, look for someone and odds are, you will find that person in twitter. Now, the reason it matters, is because it allows marketing to happen too. Not only people are jumping into the twitter wagon, but also businesses, big multi-million dollar corporations go “tweet” on a regular basis.

Now, there are many ways to tweet. One can tweet in the morning, after breakfast, with a coffee, with green eggs and ham, over a goat, in a train, with a mouse, over the computer, in your cellphone, “crack”berry or iphone. Nothing says good morning better than opening your email and being  greeted with a twitter message  informing you that you have a new follower or getting the latest news through the fastest and unfiltered vine in the planet.

Is twitter big? Just wait 'till you see the whale!

The amazing thing about it is that you don’t just get 1 follower, but all their followers get to see your tweets (if somewhat randomly). Talking about broadcasting yourself! (no pun intended)

Twitter is part of a healthy marketing strategy. Use it wisely, as it is usually the case with social media, an uncared twitter account or a minor misdemeanor, can become a big bad stain on your brand.

Tip #1 Get a twitter account

Tip #2 The very least, post links to your site or social profile

Tip #3 Be wise

Leave me your comments and questions below.

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

Mario Canamar*

*and yeah, follow me on twitter @mariocanamar

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.