Tag Archives: linkedin

Twitter launches Promoted Trends for advertisers

17 Jun

Last night, Twitter began testing an extension of its Promoted Tweets platform: Promoted Trends.

Twitter’s Trending Topics section in the sidebar has traditionally reflected the most-talked-about topics on Twitter. With Promoted Trends, Twitter’s advertising partners can sponsor currently-trending topics that have not made their way onto the Trending Topics list. A Promoted Trend will initially appear at the bottom of the Trending Topics list on Twitter and will be marked “Promoted.” As conversations about the topic increase, Promoted Trends may move up the list.

When users click on Promoted Trends, they can follow Twitter conversations on that topic, with a persistent Promoted Tweet from the advertiser appearing at the top of the search results page.

What determines whether  Promoted Trends move up (and presumably down) the list is not yet clear. Peter Kafka at All Things Digital reports hearing from advertisers that the service may charge “tens of thousands of dollars” a day for exclusive placement rights.

I expect some controversy over this: as GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram points out, a trend that only gets onto the list because someone paid Twitter is not really a trend. That being said, I think the idea of enabling companies to highlight conversations that are relevant to their business is a good one.

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Twitter tip: Count your characters, think about it, then count again.

4 Jun

Sure, go ahead, laugh. Writing what’s essentially a status message  seems like it would be the easiest thing in the world. But as anyone who writes headlines will tell you, it can be very challenging if you’re trying to convey information and meaning within a very small space. And Twitter, with its 140-character limit, is one of the smallest spaces around.

Count Floyd

You will be so dope at counting characters, they will call you Count Floyd.

If you’re drafting a Tweet that’s important to you — an announcement, for example — you’ll want to take into account some factors that can really put the squeeze on your prose.

Spaces count
Remember that the spaces in your message count as characters.

Retweets (may) count
Do you want others to retweet you? Consider cutting your Tweet by 16 characters to allow for an @ sign and a username. (The retweet button on Twitter creates a message that doesn’t shoehorn the original Twitterer’s username into the message, but not everyone likes to use that feature.)

Links count
Will your Tweet contain a link? Check the length of the URLs that the service you’re using creates (bit.ly, ow.ly, Posterous, Tumblr, YouTube, etc.) and make room in your message for it. If you’re drafting a Tweet before whatever you’re linking to exists, leave a placeholder for the URL — ideally one of equal length.

A little Birdhouse in your soul
If you use an iPod Touch or iPhone, you might want to check out a Tweet-drafting app called Birdhouse. I haven’t yet used it myself, but I have it on good authority that it’s a handy way to draft, review, revise, rate, save, backup, publish and unpublish Tweets.

Of course, counting characters is only the beginning. There’s also the small matter of writing well in such a confined space. That’s another post.

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OK Go frontman explains why music labels block video embedding

21 Jan

via mashable.com

OK Go frontman Damian Kulash clears up something I’ve wondered about for a long time: why major music labels often restrict fans from embedding artists’ YouTube videos on other sites. Don’t they want awareness of these artists to spread? Don’t they earn revenue from YouTube’s advertising?

According to Kulash, the answer to the first question is “Yes, but not as much as they want revenue from those videos,” and the answer to the second question is, “They do, but it only works if you watch it on YouTube.com.” It turns out that video rightsholders don’t see any ad revenue from embedded videos, which is new information to me. I sincerely hope that YouTube is able to remedy that situation.

Something else Kulash says touches on something I deal with a lot at my job: the issue of whether to drive people to one site for content, or make that content available on as many sites as possible. There are pros and cons to both, and the option you choose depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. From OK Gos’ perspective, Kulash says “it is better for us to have 40 million hits on one site than one million hits on 40 sites. It makes it easier to advertise ourselves to potential sponsors, or it makes it easier for us to explain to a promoter in Albania why they actually do want us to come to their country.”

Posted via web from Rockett Science Labs

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