I’ve recently published an article about click thorough rates (CTR) of Twitter users when receiving media content. We saw amazing CTR of 10% and more, 70 times more than regular display banners.
Today I’ve recived additional data from another resource, showing the opportunity in Twitter and micro-blogging for media companies. In short, it solidifies the notion that Twitter is the most engaging platform today.
TubeMogul, my favorite video distribution and analytics comapny, released data showing that Twitter users watch a video 36% longer than any other originating social platform:

Despite Twitter’s erstwhile reputation as a soapbox for ephemeral thoughts (i.e. “long line at Starbucks…argh!”), the data tells another story: as a platform, Twitter refers among the most engaged video viewers out there.

Couple this with the CTR numbers mentioned above, and you have a winning platform for media engagement.

The challenge is still to combine platforms and channels in order  to utilize their strengths while mitigate its weaknesses.

Twitter is, by far, the most engaging online platform today, and represent a huge opportunity for traditional media and brands - read on to see the numbers.

In the last couple of months, Pravda Media was working with Israel’s biggest TV News Company, Channel 2 News, on integrating Twitter in their ongoing operation.
We looked at twitter in two ways:
1. Distribution Channel - Channel 2 News website is populated with video news section, both pre-recorded and and live. We wanted to use Twitter to drive more traffic to the site and increase video viewership.
2. Interaction Channel - We chose one TV show, called Meet The Press, and interacted with the audience via Twitter. Viewers were asked to send questions to the host before the live broadcast of the show, and twits were displayed on TV screen during the live show.

Twitter, though still a small network in Israel, proven to be the most engaging online platform today, with highest click through rates , and responses from TV audience

Let’s look the the figures:
1.  Users are clicking on links on Twitter  more than on  any other platform: the Average click through rate (CTR) of twitter links is 10% - X70 times more than banners, X10 times more than links in forums and items on Channel 2 website. According to Eyeblaster’s research, the average banner CTR of  is 0.14%.  Channel 2 News generate around 1% CTR in their items and in online forums. When considering the fact that twitter is a time based medium, meaning that users see  twits in a specific time window, these numbers are even more significant, as they represent a higher engagement.

2. Level of engagement of TV viewers is much higher in Twitter than in other media channels. Meet The Press offered viewers to ask their weekly guest questions via Twitter, in addition to the show’s forum and comments on their site. Twitter generated tens of questions and responses, much more than any other platform.

3. On  June 14th 2009, Israel’s prime minister gave an historical speech at Bar Ilan university. The speech was broadcast live on all TV channels, and online in all major news sites. 10% of all traffic reaching channel 2 news site to watch the broadcast originated from Twitter, an amazing number considering that Channel 2 started engaging in twitter only a couple of months before this event.

4. Long term involvement in twitter  provides clear benefits for the company. Channel 2 sees a constant increase in amount of interaction with their Twitter user, while all other interaction channels don’t show any growth.

Possible explanation of these figures

The numbers above show that Twitter users are more engaged in conversation and clicking more links than on other mediums. In my opinion, two important factors are causing this behaviour:

1. Twitter is all about instant gratification. 140 charecters and rapid life-streaming encourages users to click on links in order to get additional media. This experience is fundamentally different than forums, blogs and other longer formats.

2. When users connect to twitter, they already intend to engage. While banners are trying to divert reader’s attention from the content he or she wanted to consume (the site content itself), Twitter users are there for the interaction.

Would every twitter campaign generate the same CTR? No. One should remember that Channel 2 is a leading news  company, so their content  is relevant to time of the tweet, and well produced. These factors might not exist in other cases.

However, one thing is certain - Twitter, and probably Micro-blogging as a platform, is engaging and interactive. Now it is up to us to find new creative ways to use it.

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I am excited being a judge and participant in TWS2009, as well as interviewing Dave Sifry on stage. If you are excited from this event too, I have 3 free tickets to give my blog readers. Please RT this post and leave a comment if you are interested. Young entrepreneurs and students are especially welcome.The winners will be announced tomorrow morning CET, so hurry

Even if you don’t get a free ticket, you can apply for 40% discount  tickets  here: http://zone.thecoils.com
Since there are only limited amount of such tickets, make sure you don’t miss that opportunity.
Here is some more information about the event:

The event will take place on July 13th, 2009 (next week) at the Inter Continental Hotel in Tel Aviv.

The TWS2009 aims to find and present the 10 most promising Internet startups in Israel. The event is of, for, and about the leading figures and companies that are driving innovation in the Israeli Internet economy. Well-known professionals worldwide, such as Brian Solis, Rafe Needleman, Ron Conway, Stowe Boyd, Dave Sifry, Deborah Schultz, Marc Goldberg, and Saul Klein chose the 10 winning startups.
The event is organized by Israel’s biggest blog the.co.ils, with Globes as a partner.

The TWS2009 is a great platform to meet the most innovative startups, hottest ideas, latest trends, the leading VCs operating in Israel and some from abroad, private investors, seasoned and brightest young entrepreneurs, visionaries and real Web savvies.

On stage we are going to have David Sifry (Technorati), Dan Ciporin (Venture Partner Canaan Partners, Shopping.com), Gary Vaynerchuk (WineLibrary.com, via web conference) and of course, the 10 most promising Israeli startups challenged by our respected Israeli judges.

Black Dawn

An apocalyptic end of the world series by Webserials.

Why watch it? Nice special effects, and refreshing theme for a web show

Why not? actors are not as good as the special effects

FilmFellas

Taking a note from Scoresese masterpiece, FilmFellas is trying to capture the indie movie makers spirit.

Why watch it? beautiful images and lighting is crisp HD, interesting conversations, and the young guy is getting bashed all the time.

Why not? if you are not into filmmaking and indie movement, you’ll probably get bored

Flying Kebab

A Brazilian indie project, about a young guy flying to Beirut following a letter in Arabic about his past.

Why watch it? great art work, good actors, interesting story, very good editing, great storytelling.

Why not? Episodes are not released frequently, as the project is community supported. Also, episodes are subtitled.

What is your favorite Web Show?

Creating an appealing social shopping experience is a challenge, and trying to do so with non geeky goods (read not gadgets) is even a bigger challenge. Sense of Fashion, a new Israeli startup is trying to do exactly that.

Luckily, it has a great team, including Daria Shualy, Yael Givon, and Yariv Habut, all are friends and experienced media and tech folks. I had a chance to chat with them a bit:

1. What’s sense of fashion?
Sense of Fashion is home to all indie fashion lovers: fashionistas, designers, fans, fashion students, street fashion bloggers, photographers, anyone who expresses themselves through fashion. It’s a real live place, where all these people can interact in a genuine way, influence, get inspired, sell and shop.

2. Who should go to this site?
Anybody who expresses themselves through fashion, or who wants to get inspired by people who do. Anybody looking to buy a unique fashion item, which no one else has, for a reasonable price and perhaps from a far away land. Anyone who’s looking for a platform to show off and sell their designs. Someone who’s experiencing a fashion emergency, and wants a real live feedback.

3. Is it another social network?
It has social features, but it is a lot more than that. What it does, really, is imitate the real live experience of the indie fashion world off-line, instead of the segregated (a site which is only meant for shopping, or sites just for show-offers etc.) experience most fashion web sites offer today.

4. What’s the difference between that and Ebay or Etsy?
The difference is huge. First and foremost, Sense of Fashion is ONLY about FASHION. You’re not selling a fabulous dress next to a lawn mower or a burp cloth set. Second, since it’s not only for designers, and lots of fashionistas are active users on the site, the designers get a real live clientèle base to interact with*. Third, you can upload an unlimited amount of fashion-photos for free, which enables designers, photographers, students and stylists to use it as an online portfolio, and by doing so, really bring together in one place all the various elements which compile the indie fashion scene. Oh, and of course, our sales commission is lower, we currently do not charge a listing fee, and there’s no expiration date on the photos.

5. How do you see the role of social web elements in your site as a part of your future success?
Well, our business model is based on commerce (sales commission) and the social interaction enhances commerce, just like it does in real life. You see what other people are wearing, and their on-photo tags or descriptions tell you where they got it. If it’s from a designer on the web site, and you buy it, that’s another sale. If it’s outside the site, it goes to a future part of the business plan which has to do with affiliates.

Good luck guys in changing the world of fashion!

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Like last year, I am a judge at TWS 2009, Israel’s web start ups competition. Among the judges are Brian Solis, Meir Brand (CEO of Google Israel), Deb Schultz, Ayelet Noff , Jeff Pulver, and others.
Submit your startup by the 24th of June (yes! in two days!).

The event is taking place on the 13th of July.

See you all there!

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I was happy to hear that soon you’ll be back at the helm of the most inspiring company in the market today. We are all looking forward to your next keynote.

However, I have a request for you - please don’t forget your Pro users. And no, I am not talking about Final Cut Studio 3.

I have a Mac for couple of years, and I’ve become one of the most active Mac ambassadors in Israel. I have a video podcast called Mac Anonymous, the first Hebrew video podcast about Mac. I’ve written several blogs about Mac and the transition from PC, and convinced many of my friends to buy one, even though they cost so much in Israel.

When asked what do I like Mac so much, I would say two things:

1. I see my laptop more than anything else during the day, so it better be beautiful.

2. With a Mac, the gap between vision and reality is a single click, with Final Studio and iLife.

However, I am afraid that Apple’s latest announcements are changing my second statement.

Two main hardware changes makes it extremely difficult to use your laptops as creative hub:

1. Removal of one firewire port

2. Removal of Express Card slot

Now it is impossible to capture HDV with 15″ Macbook Pro - one needs two FW ports for that (one for the camera and one for a fast hard disk), and there is only one in the latest models. This could have been bypassed with an Express Card Firewire adapter - but it was removed as well.

A lot of Pro equipment is using Express Card slot. I am using a mobile editing, high performance F2 Sonnet HD. I Can’t use it with the new laptops. Matrox released some amazing capture devices using Express Card - bye bye to those as well. So if I want to use  my laptop and  HDV camera, the same format used by indie filmmakers, ENG and video bloggers, I have to buy 17″ Macbook Pro - an able machine, that is way too large,  heavy and expensive for my needs.

I love Final Cut Studio. You changed the market with its features and pricing. I love the fact that I can use my laptop for my day to day work and for my video editing.

But it feels that you are neglecting the pro users.

I hope we will see more pro features in the Macbook Pro line.

Sincerely Yours,

Kfir Pravda

—————————————-

This letter was sent to Steve Jobs’ email, found in online forums. I have no way to validate this address. It will be helpful if you’ll share and retweet it as much as possible.

Thanks!

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I was sick last week, and that’s why I didn’t post anything lately. Now I am back to work, and this blog will be updated as usual.

Digitas produced a great event called Digital Content Newfront couple of weeks ago, as a part of NYC Internet Week.

And I was an active participant, even though I was thousands of miles away.

The event covered brand marketing strategies, and was keynoted by Al Gore, who discussed Viewers Generated Ads, a strategy that let viewers create ads for brands. Mr. Gore talked extensively about the need for authenticity in brand marketing, a tricky topic for cigarettes and oil companies.
I was interested to hear Al Gore’s take on that - so with a simple twit, I’ve sent a question to the conference, from my living room in Israel. My friend Jon Burg who was moderating incoming twitter questions, asked the question at the event - and Gore responded simply by saying that they don’t work with such companies. I was a part of the whole thing as I watched the live video feed from NYC.
The amazing part of the story is not that I was able to see a video stream of a remote event and ask a question. This was done before with ustream and blog.tv. The important point here is that these technologies are now mature enough:

• The video feed was crisp and almost without any buffering. From urls of the event I believe it is the work of Bitgravity, an affordable HD CDN.
• The room was covered with multiple cameras using Tricaster , a low cost video mixer.
• And Twitter was pretty stable.

So I was in my PJ, at home, talked with one of the brightest minds, Al Gore, all thanks to usable, affordable technologies.

The Physical walls are falling. The only barrier for communication is willingness.

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HP Recently released a new service called Gabble, a private video sharing site. The service is very simple - users can create groups and directly record and share videos with their friends and co-workers. The interface is slick and straight forward, and works well.
The need for cloud based video service with advanced privacy settings is clear - companies, consultants, and family members can use it for business communication, training, and share their private family videos. Also, media companies can use such a product to interact with their viewers, and integrating UGC in their content in a controlled environment.

This is also the announced direction of Seesmic, as Loic Le Meur stated in an interview I did with him back in January.
Though the need is clear, it is not clear whether HP have what’s needed to make this platform succesful. It is almost an industry secret, not being pushed through HP’s PR and ads.
Also, the execution is less than great, as in most of my tests I’ve encountered video and invitation issues (the two key parts of the platform…)
It is yet to be seen when we will have a platform that answers the need for private video sharing with social elements. Currently, HP Gubble is definitely not the answer.

How wrong can a YouTube competition get  http://bit.ly/cNKdd

Justin.tv becomes more social   http://bit.ly/1aKVNF

How can I share video on Twitter?   http://bit.ly/Jecii

Concrete news about Hulu’s international expansion  http://bit.ly/18u7Aw