What Would Jane Austen Have Twittered?

After the recent Web 2.0 Expo NY--a sprawling, week-long conference and exhibition--I ducked into the Morgan Library to catch "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy." A one-room show about an 18th century novelist seemed like the perfect antidote to a week of tech talk in the Death Star Javits Center.

As I'd hoped, the Morgan focuses on a handful of objects from Austen's life, and the commentary is thoughtful. I was surprised, though, to find myself thinking that had Twitter been around in Austen's time (1775-1817), she would likely have been a fan.

Austen wrote more than 3,000 letters, many to her sister Cassandra. They corresponded constantly, starting new letters to each other the minute they finished the last one and sharing the minutia of their lives. From reading Austen's novels, I'd always assumed that people in her era spent a long time waiting for the mail. But the show mentions that during Austen's life, mail in London and environs was delivered six times a day. Sometimes, a letter sent in the morning was delivered the same evening. Which makes snail mail sound a lot more like email or twitttering.

The speed of mail at the time and the content of the Austen sisters' letters suggest that the desires to communicate instantly and to let other people know what you ate for breakfast aren't modern phenomenon. Of course, Twitter lets you share your soy milk-to-cereal ratio with strangers and thus adds a layer of publishing to our updates. But people today often assume that email, Twitter and other relatively instant communication media have created a slew of brand new communication behaviors. The Jane Austen show at the Morgan suggests just the opposite: our human patterns are surprisingly consistent, and technology evolves to meet us.

Incidentally, the show doesn't say when multi-daily snail mail faded, and I wonder if it passed out of fashion with the rise of the telegraph in the mid-1800s. Anyone know?

Web2Open: An Exciting Experiment

As I've written here recently, we've got some amazing sessions scheduled for Web2Open--the free unconference hosted by Web 2.0 Expo in SF this week. One that I'm particularly excited about is a new experiment, "Practice Your Customer Pitch."

We're bringing in five startups who will get two minutes each to give their customer pitch (not their VC pitch), as if meeting a potential customer at a cocktail party (i.e., no slides but OK to drink if you want). To give them feedback, we've assembled a top-notch panel of serial entrepreneurs and marketing experts. It's not a competition, so there's no judging or ranking—just discussion among the entrepreneurs, panelists and other session attendees.

We're trying this idea for the first time, so who knows how it will go? But in the entrepreneurial spirit, we've mitigated our risks: even if the format doesn't sing, the session can only be a hit given the participants. (Thanks to Sean O'Malley for helping us connect with a lot of these folks.)

The rather impressive panel:
*Rashmi Sinha, moderator. SlideShare CEO
*Robert Acker, panelist. LiveSpot CEO
*Michael Cerda, panelist. cc:Betty CEO
*Nilofer Merchant, panelist. Rubicon Consulting CEO

The smart startups:
*CrowdVine, social networks for conferences
*dbTwang, Dogster for guitars
*Doodle, online scheduling magic
*Maestro Market, a Web 2.0 speakers' bureau
*Magoosh, customized test-prep

The session is on Weds, April 1 from 10:50 - 11:40a. If you still need a free pass for Web2Open, you can register using the code websf09opn. There's more general event info on the Open website.

Web2Open: Great Sessions, Recessionary Pricing

Next week is Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, a four-day mind meld for programmers, practitioners and novitiates. The Expo is co-produced by O'Reilly and TechWeb, who, for the third year in a row, are devoting resources and a row of rooms to Web2Open--a free, two-day unconference that anyone can attend.

The Open, April 1 and 2 at Moscone West, is like most unconferences in that we provide a blank grid and designated rooms so that you can create your own discussion sessions. But unlike a lot of unconferences, the Open includes a handful of prescheduled sessions. And I gotta tell you, this year, we've got some incredible stuff on tap--all for the low, low price of free.

Among the highlights are Hybrid sessions (more fun than the name suggests). We pick three sessions in the main conference track and open them to all Web2Open attendees. Then the presenters from those sessions follow up with lively discussions in the Open. You can join both parts of Hybrid, or just one. This year's Hybrids include:

- Web Developer Tools with Ajaxian's Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer

- The Lean Startup with customer development expert and "Lessons Learned" blogger Eric Ries

- Sparking a Crush: Attracting and Retaining New Users with Adaptive Path's Alexa Andrzejewski

To attend the Open, you need a free Expo pass and the urge to participate in conversation. The Open site has details on how to register, along with session times. See you next week!

Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: A Case Study

Back in December, Dell reported that offers from its Dell Outlet Twitter account had led to more than $1 million in revenue. A small percentage for a company that books $16B in revenue annually--but a nice number nonetheless, particularly in a dreary economy.

Question is: are they the only ones?

I haven't yet found anyone else claiming to have micromessaged their way to a number with six zeroes. But I did have an interesting conversation recently with a company that used Twitter to drive a 20 percent increase in sales in December, and additional growth in February. Here's the story.

Namecheap, a 70-person company headquartered in LA, is a domain name registrar that's been in business for nine years. They rely mostly on word-of-mouth advertising and have just two people who do marketing (one of whom is devoted to SEO); almost everyone else provides customer service.

Michelle Greer, their sole marketing specialist, has been on Twitter personally since 2007, and she thought the service might be a good fit for Namecheap. To convince the CEO, she showed him what Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO, was doing on Twitter, including promotions. He gave her the go-ahead to experiment.

Michelle set up a Namecheap Twitter account, and in December, to launch it, she ran a contest: once an hour, she posted a Christmas-related trivia question (she's used TweetLater to preschedule the posts and a book to help her come up with the 600+ trivia questions). To win, you had to be one of the first three @replies with the correct answer. The prize was credit a for one-year domain registration; to receive it, you needed a Namecheap account.

The company considers the contest a success. People got addicted to it, battling to get in the first replies. And they Twittered and blogged about it, too, helping Namecheap's follower count jump from 200 to over 4,000 in the one month and bumping the company's PageRank, too.

So what about the actual business numbers? Namecheap's site traffic increased more than 10 percent in December, driving a 20 percent increase in domain registrations. In addition, Michelle says, "The increase in Twitter followers allowed us to see a 30 percent increase in traffic when we ran a Super Bowl promo on Twitter [in February]."

The contest had costs: primarily Michelle's time and intense attention for the whole month of December. Still, it's no surprise that Namecheap is trying more contests. And they're not the only ones. This week, our friends at Boing Boing launched a Tweet Week contest, giving away cool stuff to help build their Twitter followerships--which can, in turn, help drive blog traffic. Meanwhile, a consortium of four dog-focused businesses--Paw Luxury, Best Bully Sticks, Ask Spike Online and Four Legged Media--are starting the Barkhunt tonight, a scavenger hunt that will last for just one hour, with clues going up on Twitter every five minutes. (I swear, I didn't pick that one because I'm a dog person; if you know of a cat-related Twitter contest, add a comment or @reply me, and I'll update the post.)

Likely, it'll be a while before a contest drives $1 million in revenue through Twitter. But they're not the only way to make non-spam money through the service, and it's interesting to see companies experimenting with the medium.

Everyone's New Favorite Question About Twitter

For a while there, you couldn't surf a single drop of the web without smacking into the question, "How will Twitter make money?" Although that question remains unanswered, Internet interest has shifted. Today's favorite question about the micromessaging service is: "Has Twitter has gone mainstream?" Or, somewhat less optimistically, "Will Twitter go mainstream?"

Of course, the question isn't new; people have been asking it since about three minutes after Twitter debuted. But with an ever-rising tide of media exposure, it's becoming more likely that Twitter has become part of everyone's everyday experience.

As the mother of all mainstream events, the Superbowl gives us a handy gauge of Twitter's reach. On the one hand, Twitter played a big role in fan reviews of the ads during the game. In addition, traditional media outlets now regularly refer to Twitter without feeling the need to explain to readers what the service is. Check out this this cool, Twitter-driven post-game report from The New York Times, or Forbes' casual mention of tweetups.

On the other hand, NBC didn't incorporate Twitter into its broadcast, and--more telling--not a single ad included a sponsor's Twitter handle. While a few brands did use Twitter to reach fans, you'll know for sure that Twitter has hit the big time when you begin to see @CompanyNames in television and print ads.

Meantime, if you're looking to incorporate Twitter into your own company's communication strategy, join us this Friday, February 6, at 10a PT for a new webcast, "Advanced Twitter for Business." We've posted a preview with a couple of juicy tips, and I'll be offering discounts from @TweetReport.

Why Does Twitter's Business Model Matter to You?

That's a real question, not a rhetorical one.

In a Radar post I wrote last week about whether Twitter's user base was hitting a critical inflection point, the first comment was, "How does Twitter make money?" Although the post wasn't about Twitter's business model per se, a lot of the comments were. Which wasn't too surprising, given that many people seem to care intensely about how Twitter will make money (it doesn't do so yet).

Twitter could make money in a number of ways, from selling data to selling services (it recently posted an ad for a Business Product Manager, calling the role "Twitter's first product manager focused on revenue generation" and then describing a product that sounds like competition for Yammer and Present.ly). Indeed, Blog posts and articles speculate constantly, and comments around the Web range from curious to seemingly angry that Twitter is not yet generating serious cash. Some of the discussion is constructive, but a lot of it is pretty hostile toward Twitter.

I can understand the argument that people who build services on the Twitter API want assurance that the company will be around for the long haul. But that point rarely comes up in stories or comments, and I suspect it's not fueling the fire.

So, if you're among those who care: why does Twitter's business model matter to you?

Twitter's Hockey Stick Moment?

Over the weekend, TechCrunch postulated that with a frenzy of election-related activity, Twitter hit its hockey stick moment in late October. The theory goes that Twitter saw a 25 percent increase in U.S. visits from September to October and is thus about to experience the sort of explosive growth that will propel it into mainstream consciousness.

That could well be the case. In the course of researching our new report, "Twitter and the Micromessaging Revolution," we found that Twitter's user base grew more than 500 percent from October 2007 to October 2008. But we were even more interested to discover that the service has enjoyed an usual effect: as more and more people have joined, the percentage of active users has remained constant [updated:] at about 20%. Among active users (those who post at least once a month), approximately 20 percent post daily and about eight percent post more than 100 times a month (not including known bots and feeds). Though web services usually see a drop in the rate of use as lots of tire-kickers come and go, Twitter's steady usage suggests that a jump in visitors during October could correspond to a big increase in regular users.

Yesterday, a Twitterer asked Tim O'Reilly why "Twitter and the Micromessaging Revolution" would be money well spent. Here are ten solid things the report provides (most explained in 140 characters or fewer):

1. Highly readable investigation into why Twitter works--and why it's important

2. Growth statistics from Twitter, synthesized with stories and analysis to give you a comprehensive picture of the Twittersphere

3. Examines the entire micro-messaging ecosystem, including the various players, where Twitter fits and some new developments

4. Clever and useful tips on how to integrate Twitter into your business, backed up by stories about how others are using Twitter successfully

5. Why follower counts may not be the best way to measure Twitter influence, and an alternate model, analogous to Google Page Rank, for identifying influential users

6. Why and how Twitter's loose social graph and the default public nature of Twittering make for a remarkably intuitive and interesting social network

7. Exclusive interviews with Twitter founders and leading users

8. Gentle introduction to using Twitter for the newbie

9. Twitter business models and why Twitter data is important

10. Dozens of links to key resources and examples

We've also created a free webcast that pulls from the report's Twitter Primer to give you an introductory overview of the service. (The presentation also has tips and examples not included in the report.) Nearly 450 people watched when we broadcast it live last week, and more than 1,800 have viewed it since we posted it to YouTube four days ago. Perhaps we've hit our webcast hockey stick moment?

Join Us for a Tweetup Tonight

If I'm blogging it, is still a tweetup? Either way, we're hosting a little shin dig tonight (Thursday) to celebrate the release of our new report, "Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution: Communication, Connections, and Immediacy--140 Characters at a Time."

Join us from 6:30 - 8p at House of Shields, 39 Montgomery St, SF. It's a block from the Palace Hotel and the Web2.0 Summit, but the chatting and drinks are open to everyone.

In related news, follow our new Twitter Report account for interesting Twitter tidbits from Web2 and beyond. And if you're wondering what all the Twitter hoopla is about anyway, this excerpt from the report will give you a sense of why micro-messaging excites us:

Twitter Report Excerpt

New Radar Report: Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution

It would be a stretch to say that Twitter helped Obama win the presidency. But there's no question that the messaging service played an important role in this year's elections. To wit:

* Obama signed up early and has by far the most followers of anyone on Twitter. He and his campaign sent messages regularly from the trail.

* Twitter Vote Report, created by users building on Twitter's API, gave voters a way to share information about the state of polling in their precincts and to view aggregated national reports.

* Twitter's own Election 2008 site provided a live window into people's thoughts and feelings about the candidates and issues over the last couple of months.

Taken together, these uses of Twitter reveal that the platform is shifting from a geek-niche toy to a significant new communications channel. If you're wondering what it will look by the 2012 elections, check out "Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution: Communication, Connections, and Immediacy--140 Characters at a Time," released this morning. In the report, my co-authors and I take a deep look at the messaging service, its ecosystem and its implications. We include exclusive information and insights from the Twitter team, plus best practices for companies looking to use Twitter and other micro-messaging services.

To celebrate the release of the report, Tim and I are holding a tweetup tomorrow night. In case you don't follow us on Twitter, here's the info:

Thursday, November 6, 6:30-8:00pm. House of Shields, 39 New Montgomery Street (one block from the Palace Hotel and Web 2.0 Summit), San Francisco.

Hope to see you there, and let us know if you have any questions or comments about the report.

A Successful Experiment

During Web2Open yesterday, we ran an experiment that turned out to be a big success. Because it felt like a model that could be extended and used by others--but it hasn't been blogged about widely--I'll explain here what we did.

We started with the idea that we wanted to hold a conference speed-dating event. But we didn't have a natural set of pairs who'd want to meet, like VCs and entrepreneurs, or writers and agents. What we did have were a number of well-known experts and a bunch of thoughtful attendees. So we ran small speed Q&As with the experts: we set up five tables, one each for programmers, designers/UI specialists, marketing/community experts, businesspeople and undeclared, and then we had five experts--Clay Shirky, Kara Swisher, Matt Cutts, Saar Gur and Tim O'Reilly--each hold a nine-minute informal Q&A at a table. Every nine minutes, the experts switched tables until they'd hit them all. The whole thing took 50 minutes, plus lots of lingering afterward. It had great energy, and people were smiling the entire time.

Why'd it work? It was intimate (about a dozen people gathered at each table), engaged and informal. All which provided a nice contrast to the general conference. And it required no prep on the part of the experts (except their life work, of course): they just showed up and chatted.

What would we do differently next time? At least two things. 1) We didn't have a bell to signal the 8-minute mark or that it was time to switch tables--so we shouted. That was too much like we were yelling at people. 2) Afterward, Tim said, "That was great, but I wish I'd had time to ask the participants questions." Good point. It would be cool to increase the time per table to at least fifteen minutes and let the experts do some asking--or possibly make it all questions from the experts. (Update: Clay adds two more good suggestions: Make it an hour, with four 12-min sessions, and spend 12 minutes at the beginning introducing the speakers, to give them time and context for the initial questions.)

How would you adapt and use speed Q&A?

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