Twitterrati

Frrole: What’s Happening on Twitter in Your City?

Mark Evans — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:21:50 +0000

Idea: Looking to see what’s happening on Twitter in your city? Frrole delivers a “social newspaper” of 20 cities.

My take: An interesting and easy way to get a snapshot of the local TwitterSphere.

Utility Grade: 6/10

A Whois for Twitter Users

Mark Evans — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:00:51 +0000

One of Twitter’s shortcoming is how little information it provides about users, other than a short bio and a URL. So how do you quickly get more insight about particular users?

The answer could be Twho is This, which offers up an extensive list of a person’s social/digital presence, along with their Twitter bio and a link to follow them.

It’s not the prettiest service and it could benefit from offering more information but it’s better than what Twitter offers.

An example below is Mathew Ingram (aka @mathewi). By doing a query on his username, it shows 14 different services in which he has a presence.

$300 Million of Twitter, Please

Mark Evans — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:40:16 +0000

Twitter may not have a vibrant business model but it sure has no problem attracting heavyweight investors.

The latest person to step up in a major way is Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who bought a $300 million stake from an early Twitter investor as part a strategy “to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact.” (More details on the New York Times)

You figure with so much interest, Twitter could do an IPO. Of course, an IPO means you have to disclose your financials, which Twitter may not want to do given it’s probably spend a lot more money than its generating.

Chances are that Twitter never does an IPO. Instead, it will be snapped up for billions of dollars by someone looking for buy a major social media foothold

Postpost Streamlines Twitter

Mark Evans — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:00:02 +0000

A fact of life about Twitter is the more people you follow, the noisier your live stream becomes. As much as the live stream is a parade in which a new “float” comes along on a regular basis, there can be times when you want a way to have a more focused or narrow slice of what’s happening with our live stream.

An interesting tool to take control of your live stream is Postpost, which drills down into it so that people can do searches for particular keywords. For example, if I was interested in tweets about “startups”, Postpost would generate the following results from my live stream.

Value proposition: An interesting and user-friendly way to find specific topics within your live stream. It’s particularly useful if you follow particular topics.

Rating: 8/10

So How is Twitter Making Money?

Mark Evans — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:05:52 +0000

Curious about how Twitter makes money? Henry Blodget did an interview recently at the Insight conference with Adam Bain, Twitter’s chief revenue officer, which I suppose is the guy responsible for helping turn Twitter into a business big enough to support its sky-high valuation and growing workforce (800 and counting!)

Tired of Foursquare Checkins on Twitter?

Mark Evans — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 12:47:44 +0000

Product: Proxlet, a Chrome extension

Job: Eliminates the “noise” from your Twitter stream such as people who broadcast their Foursquare check-ins.

Description: “Using Proxlet, you can block noisy apps, filter annoying hashtags, or temporarily mute annoying users. You can even cut out the chatter altogether & turn Twitter into the ultimate RSS reader by showing only tweets with links. And, we’re adding new Twitter super-powers all the time.”

Cost: Free

Twitter Ad Revenue to Triple by 2013

Mark Evans — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 01:06:16 +0000

Is advertising going to help Twitter create a business? Well, it will help, although you do have to wonder whether Twitter can generate enough revenue to justify its sky-high valuation.

eMarketer suggests Twitter’s ad revenue to hit $339.5 million by 2013 from $139.5 million this year.

What Does 100M Active Users Mean for Twitter?

Mark Evans — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:14:56 +0000

So Twitter has 100 million active users. Big number but what does it mean?

It means there is a huge community of people who use Twitter because it has some kind of value.

It means while Twitter still hasn’t gone mainstream, it’s pretty darn popular, and not just in North America.

It means another micro-blogging service looking to take on Twitter is going to have a difficult time getting a foothold.

It means having 100 million using doesn’t mean you have a vibrant business or guarantees a business plan.

It means people are completely happy to use a free service.

It means Twitter could probably sell itself to someone looking for a large user base it can monetize.

What does 100 million mean to you?

Note: Apologies for the blogging absence. Work and summer vacation kind of got the best of me.

Cool Info-graphic of Twitter’s Growth

Mark Evans — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 10:46:28 +0000

Here’s a cool info-graph of Twitter’s growth over the past five years via Visually.

by visually via

App of the Day: tweetLevel

Mark Evans — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:31:18 +0000

Links: http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/
Description: A new measurement service from Edelman that calculates someone’s influence by be slicing, dicing and crunching their Twitter data. It lets people discover their TweetLevel “score”, and displays the number of followers, tag cloud, who influences them, who they influence, and who retweets them. TweetLevel also lets people search by topic based on influence, popularity, engagement and trust.
Our take: An interesting and user-friendly tool for PR agencies and brands looking to get a better handle on who they should be targeting. More of a “lite” product than something offering robust features and analytics.