What if MSN bought Twitter?
September 17, 2009
There has been a lot of speculation on the value of Twitter and quite rightly. I won’t explore it all but the most recent one says maybe a billion but I think this kind of assessment of the value of social media has to be done differently if it’s going to be done seriously.
To begin I don’t think VC’s are going to be fooled by the old reach / buzz being the primary valuation mechanic. Dot.com bubble then a second time by MySpace and Facebook. It just aint worth $1 billion and in these economic times it sure as hell is not. On its own Twitter has a long way to go to being a profitable biz it’s all speculative. Facebook has only just started to break even and poor old Rupert is totally bumbling along with his very expensive gift to Jnr which could become a mountain of debt.
So its value all comes down to who buys it. What value it brings the buyers existing biz and vice-versa.
So when would it be worth $1 billion. Well. What if MSN bought it? What if they integrated it into Messenger, syncing it with MSN Groups and Hotmail? The whole suite. If MSN’s reported figures are anything to go by it has the largest global reach of any social media through Hotmail alone. Yes email is social media for those in doubt. So add that with MSN Groups, Messenger with a desktop app on X million computers (anyone know the figure?) AND Bing. You just need to crack mobile which Twitter kind of already has.
It has good proven ad technology and a well organized global sales force behind it for agency / big client advertising. It would only need to adopt a Google Adwords approach to hit the long-tail and bingo you have the number one cash rich social media platform tied together by Windows Live ID that syncs the lot.
It looks like MSN are already trying to make Messenger more like Twitter with ‘Whats New’ and ‘Post Note’. Don’t bother just buy em. You have the pockets.
When a client asks you to build a website you should consider the below before responding..
- What is the desired action? Not what is the desired website action but human action? Is it to buy something. Believe something. Join something. Contribute something. What does the role of the website play in achieving that goal?
- Does achieving that goal really need a website?
- What would it take for YOU to perform the desired action above. Honestly. When was the last time you did it? How did a website help prompt or empower you to? Not as a marketer or web geek but as an average punter who doesn’t give a shit about clever executions.
- Why does this site deserve to exist in a sea of billions of web pages. What value does it bring to the creative commons? Or is it just adding to the clutter?
- Would it be popular without the support of buying millions of impressions of media placements? Clicks are easy to get when you pay for them. But wasting clients money even if they are too stupid to realise isn’t professional.
- If this is the ‘final’ destination? The grand finale in the relationship. Does it make it feel dirty like a one night stand? E.G. I got what I wanted now fuck off. Or could this be the start not the end of a relationship? It should always be the latter with the consumer at least.
- When reputation is everything would people really risk looking uncool to share this with their peers?
- If it involves a game when drawing on inspiration think hard about which game you ‘liked’ that you actually played. I hear loads of people saying they went to check out a game and thought it was great but when asked if they played it they often say ‘not to the end’ or they simply find and excuse as to why not.
- Are you just building it to take the clients money?
ANYTHING I HAVE MISSED?
It’s nothing new to suggest that the Network disrupts all it touches. Working as a specialist in the networked space over the last year it shouldn’t have come as a surprise all the things I had previously believed as a marketer, professional, businessman and more should also be disrupted. By focusing purely on working with brands in this space I am beginning to have to face some realisations that force me to be more puritanical in my dealings with clients. This means saying some unpopular things to people in crowded rooms but I assure you do it you will feel a lot better!

Inconvenient Truths
-Branding exercises, no matter how much money you throw at them can’t hide that what you say you believe in and what you do don’t marry.
-The only awards worth winning are sales. Clever creative advertising just makes people talk about how clever the ad was and how great your ad agency is and not your product. Just because it’s a clever ‘viral’ ad where people were the channel you broadcast through doesn’t mean the same does not apply.
-Agencies that fail to enforce the required changes on their clients thinking just to protect old margins or be safe in meeting old KPI’s should also be held to account. As a purest it is my duty to show up these failings. If you are wasting 99.96% of your client’s budget you should not have a job. A conversion rate of 0.04% is literally just that. If you need you client to spend millions on getting people to engage with your mechanic they are paying for your incompetencies.
-Client: If your agency isn’t challenging you on a daily basis with these different rules you need to find a new one. The world is changing dramatically why aren’t your KPIs.
-If advertising bridges the gap between supply and demand. What happens when there is no gap?
-When you are left only with your naked product. What happens if it’s not the best one?
-Why isn’t it the best one when social media offers the market research nirvana of non-interruptive voyeurism? Listen.
-If you have to spend millions on trying to convince the consumer its what they need it obviously isn’t.
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-Don’t be so afraid of being seen to be real people? I can trust a fallible person far more than an apparently infallible one. Even if they were infallible how could I, a fallible one, ever connect with them? People buy people.
-Closed models of any sort won’t save you. The only restrictions and limitations you are imposing are on your own business.
-The only way most shareholders will realise this is when all that they possess has been stripped of any or all value.
-Marketing in social media is only just a bit better than marketing any where else because marketing treats things as ‘channels’.
-Business leaders that neglect the opportunities that the network presents to their company should be held responsible for gross misconduct. Even if their limited view of it is as a market condition they still failed to account for it.
If more than 10% of the energy around your brand is driven by you there is something wrong. This means that if less than 90% of the energy around your brand is not from the consumer there is something wrong. The 90:10 rule means your consumer is engaged, they like your product, they are improving it with you, they are marketing it for you, directly selling it for you, and they are your brand. This is where you need to be. If you aren’t you are not future proof and the future happens quickly nowadays.
UK’s Top Female Social Media Guru & Speaker 2009
February 27, 2009
Lisa Devany contacted me through the P2P Community I admin on Ning and asked if I could suggest some top notch female speakers in social media for an upcoming conference being planned on behalf of Brand Republic here in the UK.
Well I didn’t know too many. In fact I am ashamed to say none. Having just put on a social media event of my own with what was later pointed out as an all male cast I felt like some girl power. I reached out to my network across Twitter etc only to be inundated with recommendations within minutes. I’ve listed them below but if I’m honest the only reason why I can be sure they are any good is because in most cases they have come through people I trust some of whom are gurus and great speakers in their own right.
@suw (Suw Charman-Anderson)
@aleksk (Aleks Krotoski)
@lauraoliver (Laura Oliver) of Journalism.co.uk
Emily Dent from St Lukes @emilydent
@mseaons Melanie Seasons
@katyhowell Katy Howell of Immediate Future
@Laurajohnson from Pegasus PR
Addtions:
Helen Aspell @hel_razor
Fleur Hicks of Pass it on Media @PassItOnMedia
Amanda Rose @amanda
Laura Whitehead @littlelaura
Amy Sample Ward of NpTech Comm@amyrsward
Joanna Shields from Bebo
Katie Lee of Shiny Media @shinykatie
Helen Nowicka from Shiny Red @helennow
Judith Lewis @judithlewis
Alex Goldstein @dogstrust
Helen Keegan @technokitten
The shame of not knowing any of these women has led me to take this one step further and offer up a quest to find the…
UK’S TOP FEMALE SOCIAL MEDIA GURU & SPEAKER!
So 1st phase is taking recommendations for entrants (this can be self nominated if you’re that shameless) over the next 2 weeks starting from today 27.02.09. Simply post the full name, twitter / blog URL and link to a profile.
Then at the end of the two weeks 12.03.09 we can start voting over who folk think should go through to the final round.
The final round will see 5 women selected to each provide a 20min presentation (Additon: at an event to raise money for Macmillans) whihc is recorded and uploaded to Vimeo to a set social media theme. You the community get to decide those themes.
In the mean time we are looing for brands to sponsor the day and a prize. Oh yeh and you get to say you’re the…
UK’S TOP FEMALE SOCIAL MEDIA GURU & SPEAKER 2009
FINALISTS ANNOUNCED @ www.femalesocialmediaguru.com
You must be Joaquin & the Socialization of Entertainment
February 17, 2009
Getting the public involved in the creation or marketing-of entertainment is nothing new from Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds to Blair Witch. Recent speculation around Joaquin Phoenix’s headline making bloopers has pundits Parez Hilton, Huffington Post and even the UK’s mainstream Guardian debating if this is the latest the-jokes-on-you. I think the fact his brother in law Cassey Affleck is currently following him around making an undisclosed documentary about his ‘transition’ suggests all is not as it seems. So I won’t focus on the validity of it all as I think we all know the answer. What does interest me however is the role the public can now play in this kind of process through the use of social media now it’s firmly mainstream.
Previously War of the Worlds duped the public, the passive observer, into believing their world was being invaded. I don’t think the end result was expected, I may be wrong, but rather it was a rather nice and unexpected turn of events due to the pioneering quality of work achieved by Mr. Welles. Once media execs saw the value to this kind of outcome the format was continued and honed in the emerging TV medium where the joke saw the unsuspecting public as the cast / victim. Japan took the format to another level with sometimes quite sick but hilarious Crowd Man pranks. But it was all just for laughs and not really making a cultural impact or statement.
Enter daring Chris Morris who lampooned the UK Media’s changing obsessions that had focused its glare on pedophilia through a tong-in-cheek social commentary and mockumentary Brass Eye. Agree with it or not it got the public and every hack debating what it said about our society today and the media. But what if the general public could play a bigger part and unwittingly construct the story?
Recently a client who represents fighting the stigma of mental illness in the UK wanted a ‘viral’ to help combat and highlight the issue. You only have to look at how the media treats those on the edge Kerry Katona / Britney to see the media don’t exactly help the average Joe perceive mental illness in a particularly sensitive way. My idea, that I don’t think ever got to the client was; lets get a celebrity (of the cult student variety) to go along to a fresher’s event and lose the plot. Have an emotional breakdown right there. Let the students with all their camera / video phones capture and then distribute the content across social media until the newspapers, celeb mags pick up it. Sit back and watch the media / public fill in the blanks and create the story for you. You can just imagine the gossip mags YouTube comments… ‘Celeb losses the plot’ Celeb X is a nutter!

Whilst I don’t think Joaquin has done this subtly or well as he has created too much of the media himself and given too much too soon the concept is there. Rumor has it he is making a mock-u-mentory about Hollywood fame and the media circus that surrounds it.
I think the explosion of social media usage, which now dwarfs all other media for consumption, and the complexity of RPG gaming culture has created a generation that want to get much more involved other than just decide what the character should do next. Brands have tried to get into this space with their own misinformed brand versions of things like Kate Modern EG Nokia and Annasphone but failed. To be honest I’m not sure how much a brand can bring to the table beyond this attempt but would be open to suggestions.
My thinking is it’s the production companies that should be really pushing this area now that the golden reality show format is old-hat and failing them. I think social media allows social entertainment to be more than personal medias, a prank or advertising campaign but rather an opportunity to let society collectively create the story, provide the characters, then look at itself for what it really is.





From these humble beginnings to today it has become something people were willing to sacrifice the quality of the actual thing it was branding just to be in its association. You only have to look at the billion dollar global counterfeit industry to see just how out of control the brand has become. A bag that looks like a Louis Vuitton but will fall apart in 3 weeks is desireable! So valuable is The Brand that when the controlling company is valued by the financial markets the share of value attributed to its brand or brands equity can be over 60% more than the actual revenue yield. Look around you right now. Companies that are bankrupt, not very good businesses, are being bought because of the legacy of The Brand alone.











