So, ten days ago Tweetup was announced to HUGE fanfare. Tweetup of course being the ‘pay per view’ advertising model launched by the guys who created GoTo (that became Overture and defined the pay per click models we see today.) In some corners of the press this was seen as THE new game changer for advertising on Twitter.

I was one of the first thousand to sign up to see what was going on. Ten days later, the answer is – not much. Their first newsletter talks positively about developments and the odd SNAFU (would that be Twitter launching their own advertising model?) But no word on when we go live. I wasn’t convinced when it launched and I remain unconvinced.

Click for a larger image

Just a quick note for my friends in Suffolk. This Tweetup has nothing to do with our tweetup meeting which has been going a lot longer than this. I personally think this company is a poor choice. I get the Tweet-Up element of getting your profile to the top of the list but the tweetup of meetups has been quite well established in our vocabulary for some time.

When I left Cheeze (almost a year ago) I was given this t-shirt. Yesterday I was confirmed as the speaker for Twestival Bury St. Edmunds. The aim of the Twestival is to play our part on the global Twestival movement to raise money for concern charity. Bury St. Edmunds is looking to raise £1000. If the tickets are priced at £10 per go, we should be able to get £600 with a full house. There are other ideas for charity donations coming but here is my part.

When @tomgirffola confirms his attendace (tickets on sale late this week I think) – I will present in this T-Shirt. Now, Tom has promised to buy me a cape to go with it. So, if we can raise £100 I will wear the cape. Deal? Hang on to your money right now. Just leave me a comment or tweet me with a donation amount and I’ll keep a tally. This is in a good cause, so how about it?

Here is a little thought that has been kicking around for a while. I believe Twitter is evolving as more and more services plug in to it as the main ‘channel’ for connection and communication. Take foursquare as a perfect example. I can live on foursquare alone as I can connect with others and they can see when I check in. But the real growth of foursquare the app, and the growth of it for my usage comes from Twitter.

Yesterday, I checked in to Doggetts pub in London. The check in was tweeted and picked up by an old school friend whom I had not seen for well over 15 years. So, we hooked up and had a beer. That connection would not have happened without Twitter.

So this backbone thing means that in time people may be signing up for Twitter to access other services and not even participate in the whole ‘what am I doing’ thing. And if Twitter becomes equally important for its transport ability than its ‘conversational’ ability will we see an API type usage fee for services using this backbone.

Its just an idea – what do you think?

I have to admit, I haven’t spent much time looking at Twitter lists. Apart from a little play when they came out I haven’t really made any proper lists nor really followed any lists. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was on 70 lists. Once I got over the astonishment I started to look at what lists I was on. This is when I started to think about how others must perceive me and I guess that perception must come from what I tweet and far less about my biography or indeed CV.

Before I go on, I must note that I am flattered to be on the lists and I am not critiscising anyone for their classification – I am happy to be on your list

So,

• I appear on at least three lists for Suffolk People – cool as I live in Suffolk.
• One East Anglia list (I think this was a Norfolk list originally)
• Four entrepreneur lists
• Four SEO lists
• Four digital marketing /digital media lists
• Six Social Media lists
• Two Developer/Web Developer Lists – cool, but I’m not a developer
• Plus a bunch of music & movie related lists and some conversationist lists

Well, I thought it was interesting.

OK there have been some interesting articles of late talking about how brands don’t get Twitter [this NMA article is a good start]. With my experience of brands and with social media, I have seen that luxury brands are even further behind their take up and attention to social media. I am not sure how they don’t get it, really. So, based on my experience [blog post coming] here is the simple equation all luxury brands need to pay attention to.

Take 1 Luxury Car – Retail Value £40,000.

Add in some appalling customer service.

Annoy said customer with over 4,000 Twitter followers.

Customer complains on Twitter to his audience.

If 10% of this audience are engaged then 400 people will see the brand is not delivering against its values.

If 5% of this 400 were in a similar demographic and lifestyle to me then we are talking about 20 potential customers.

If 50% of the 20 potential customers decide against buying that luxury car then the potential lost revenue is £400,000.

We haven’t even calculated the lifetime value of those ten lost customers.

The time taken for me to tweet said complaint? 60 seconds. Long term damage – considerable.

Do I need to explain more?

Now, these figures are open to argument – the engagement of my audience may be higher, the number of people that take action could be a lot lower, but it could be higher. Just because a brand is deemed as luxury it does not mean they can ignore the masses. Of course, offering good customer service would negate this equation in the first place but you can’t take that for granted either.

Take this equation, put your own numbers in and see what happens and let me know what you come up with.

The travelling bug has returned. After enjoying the summer ensconsed in Suffolk, I am delighted to be contributing to, and attending some great events during the Autumn.

October: Social Media in Business. London

This looks to be a great conference and I am delighted to be hosting a discussion panel on ‘the future’ which will be fantastic. You can read my earlier post about it here, or visit the conference page here.

November: Golden Dove DM 2.0. Budapest

I had the privilege of speaking at last year’s Golden Dove (you can see the presentation here) and I am delighted to be invited back. The Golden Dove conference is the leading DM conference in Hungary and across Eastern Europe. What I like about this conference is that Hungary, and most of Eastern Europe is still advancing in its use of web 2.0. The size and reach of social media and consumption of channels like Twitter is some way behind the UK so it makes interesting work to explain what is happening and what will happen abroad, and how they can harness it. I am still working on my talk outline so it is, as yet, untitled. No doubt you’ll hear about it when I start writing. www.goldedove.hu

December: Le Web. Paris

Ah Le Web. Two years ago, I went to Le Web 3 in Paris and found it to be better than anything I had seen on the West Coast USA. More forward thinking speakers, more content and more people to speak to. I guess, unlike Ad Tech or SES, Le Web has a lot less ‘agency’ people and a lot more of the people I connect with on Twitter, FriendFeed etc. So I am delighted to be going back. I’m not speaking, but look forward to sucking up the atmosphere, connecting with others and generally enjoying myself.

The great thing about all these conferences is that, for once, I have nothing to sell. I am not working, I’m not seeking employment but I still love the topics, so I can go and enjoy myself and hopefully learn something along the way.

See you there?

A new report out confirms that Teens don’t tweet. The study from Nielson suggested that only 16% of US teens tweeted.

To quote the Mashable article,

More precisely, Nielsen has compiled data from its NetRatings panel of 250,000 US Internet users and discovered that there are fewer young people on Twitter () than on the Internet as a whole: one quarter of US Internet users are under 25, Nielsen says, but only 16% of Twitter users lie in that age range. While Nielsen is only measuring people who visit Twitter.com (not desktop and mobile clients), the analytics firm additionally claims that over 90% of TweetDeck () users are over 25, making it unlikely that there are masses of uncounted young people on third-party Twitter apps.

The Onion, always ready with an opinion, took a street survey to see what others think..

As I am not a teen, I tweet a lot. www.twitter.com/jamieriddell

Related articles by Zemanta

• Teens Don’t Tweet… Or Do They? (futurelab.net)
• Twitter not so popular with the young people (arstechnica.com)
• Seriously, Do Teens Tweet? (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Stats Confirm It: Teens Don’t Tweet (mashable.com)

Yet more genius from The Onion. Their latest daytime TV video demonstrates how over protective mums can track their kids entire life even when they have left for college.

John Cleese is now appearing on my website and I am delighted to have him here. John, who has recently been in hospital has just sent his latest Nigerian Lottery email talking about all the things he is up to. As part of that he has widgetised some of his old commercials (Accurist, Schweppes) which can be played on any site (you can find them on John’s site). You can see them on the right below my friendfeed bar (double click the play button to make it work.) As a young nipper I hadn’t seen many of his adverts so it was a pleasure to find them here without endless trawling on You Tube.

John has always been at the forefront of these digital channels including a large twitter following and a global Q&A with Seesmic. With Seesmic, John answered questions posed to him by Seesmic users one day last Autumn. I was particularly delighted that he responded to my daughter which made my day and gave my daughter a huge story to tell at school, after she’d explained what seesmic was!

These are my bookmarks for July 7th from 17:01 to 17:27:

• NASA Aeronautics Research Onboard – Brilliant animation about how Nasa research has infleunced the design and structure of modern commercial and military aviation
• Task.fm – SMS, Phone and Email Reminders – task.fm is the worlds fastest productivity tool. create smart reminders right from your email, twitter or through the app