Twitter's missing millions: How social media will make money

I have a feeling those of us old enough to use search are getting rather tired of it. Search fatigue is setting in. I've hinted as much before and more recently at /message.

Indeed my own informal research (ask the kids you know) suggests the latest generation of digital natives aren't even bothering to try it long enough to tire of it. They are skipping straight to friend recommendation. (image courtesy)

I've been doing the January thing. Searching for a holiday. What a chore that has become. Dead end after blind alley after irrelevant results. SEO without the social can do that to an Internet.

Thought: wouldn't it be good if SEO was all about an improved experience for the customer, rather than the vendor? We might be more inclined to surf the resulting SEA (search engine accuracy) with more joy in our hearts.

I digress. Search fatigue is driving us to opt for a strategy of 'good enough for me' results, by which we mean 'if it's good enough for the friend I trust, it's good enough for me'

Recent questions I've been asking of the humans Itrust on Twitter include where should I go for a holiday with guaranteed hot weather, all inclusive, safe and fun for my 4yr old with kids clubs and baby sitters. Oh and at the right credit-crunch adjusted price.

People understand what I mean by all that. And if they don't, they ask questions. People who come to know me also know what makes me happy.

We're not being lazy. We just trust our friends (our adhoc communities of purpose) more than we do search returns.

Algorithms eat your heart out.

And so to Twitter's missing millions. Everyone is asking how this phenomenon can turn all this two-way flow of conversation into cash.

And most struggle to see an answer. And I think that's because it's like looking into the fourth dimension from a world of just three.

We want to apply business models we know - ad models, banners, affiliates etc. to a networked world we are glimpsing in the corner of our eyes - a blur of a ghost we think we may have seen.

But before google gave us adsense few would have predicted such a brilliant fit with the third dimension of the digitally disaggregated world. It gave us ads that served as content by virtue of their potential to be so relevant to the content they were served against.

That was something that couldn't be done in the two dimensions of print - and couldn't be conceived of from those thinking in those two dimensions.

Twitter - and the other peer-to-peer networks which make up social media are different from the broadcast style websites which went before them. It requires a different model again to monetise.

There IS money being made in Twitter, via conversational p2p marketing. We're all buying stuff on the recommendation of those who make up our social graphs - of our ad hoc communities of purpose.

The vast majority is done with zero involvement by the brands getting the benefit. And zero involvement by Twitter.

So how will Twitter stake a claim on those missing millions?

What I do know is there IS a key to unlocking this - trouble is, not only do we not know where we left it, we don't even know what it looks like.

The adsense moment for social media will come. My guess is it'll involve a combination of conversational marketing, co-creation webs and ways of enabling production by communities of purpose.

Social media's monetisation will be less from the traditional broadcast model (cash spent to persuade us to buy the mass produced) and more from the networked world it inhabits - a model enabling a crowd-sourcing response to deliver against global, real-time niche needs.

The fourth dimension in this case is not just time, it is right now, real-time - and the adhoc communities of purpose who act in it.

And that, my friends, is not a banner ad.

It's not an ad model at all. It's ultimately a new means of production.

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Measure your change-readiness; find your leaders

The core competency of any business today is its readiness to adapt to the networked world.
How much is your business, not just preparing for change, but change-ready?

Measuring your level of change-readiness is the first step. Acting on what you learn from this excercise is the next. So, quite simply measure, the percentage of your people who are living in the network.

They are already adapting to survive. Follow them, encourage them, incentivize them and JOIN them.

What does that mean in real terms?

How many are active users of social networks (score higher for members of total communities - in which to take part you have to create part. Examples include facebook, myspace, bebo, twitter where the minimum requirement for involvement is that you create a profile).

They are learning the simple and powerful disruption of self-forming adhoc communities of purpose - the business units of the 21st century).

How many are creating blogs; with words, pictures, video or audio?
They are learning all about the disruption that we are all publishers now, all advertisers and all marketers now. They are learning how content connects people and people connect content. They are learning how to pool and share and create new value in value webs they control. They are creating networks of trust superceding anything the mass-focused centre can muster. And they are doing it inspite of, despite of, audience and for and with community.

How many have built and deployed their own widget? They have learned the user is the destination now, that it is more important to be taken with the user on their journey than to lead their horse to your chosen water.

Those who make widgets understand the content isn't theirs it is owned by the person who adopts it, who adapts it, who will pass it on with the same understanding to the next adhoc community of purpose they converse with.

So score your business for your social networkers, your bloggers and your widget makers.
You need to be beating the global averages - around 8% of internet users blog, more than 40% use social networks. The number of widgetisers can be lower - at present. We'll let you off with 5%.

Anything less and you need to take urgent action. Organise workshops, call in the experts but critically - listen to the people who are already doing it within your organisation. They are your keys to indiginous change - the most powerful kind. Listen and learn. This is an an important element of the next step: identifying your leaders.

So now get your venn diagram out.

Where those who blog, those who use social networks, and those who create widgets intersect, there you'll find those refusing to sheepwalk. They will be challenging your status quo and beating a path to success in the networked world.

These are the heretics. These are the people ready and willing to create and to be the eighth mass media. They understand WE are the distribution, the content, the 'user journey', how messages are transmitted... WE are the medium and the media carried within it.

We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.

Support them, encourage them, incentivize them. They get the disruption - and what to do about it.

Be led by them.




As always, this is a work in progress, some thoughts in beta. Your adaptions welcome.