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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 2
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 3
To comment the study, tag your messages with:
#twitterstudy
To watch the live presentation, go to:
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Comment this study
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 36
What is twitter?
What do people do with twitter?
Why did twitter grow so fast?
What business model for twitter?
Who could challenge twitter?
Conclusion
Summary
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 37
Make the bird lay golden eggs: hypothesis for
twitter’s business model
Market research
Companies pay to do market research on
twitter, twitter selects the panels and
analyses the results
Couponing and/or SMS advertising
• ads and/or coupons to opt-in twitter accounts.
• Prospects selected by geolocation or by twitter
Contextual ads (Google Adwords like)
Contextual ads on twitter search and during
tweeting
Freemium
You have to pay to get “pro” access to Twitter
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / Atelier BNP - Paribas • 38
Advantages Risks
twitter could engage in a wrong business
model.
twitter would pay all the testing costs to find the appropriate
business model
twitter would acquirea real business
experience.
twitter has high and short-term financialexpectations, twittershould monetize fastto keep VC happy.
When should twitter begin to monetize?1) Now
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / Atelier BNP - Paribas • 39
Advantages Risks
When should twitter begin to monetize?2) Later
twitter has such a big community, that it could start its monetization by testing various
business models at a small-scale.
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 40
What is twitter?
What do people do with twitter?
Why did twitter grow so fast?
What business model for twitter?
Who could challenge twitter?
Conclusion
Summary
..…….
Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 42
facebook is a giant compared to Twitter
facebook?The ox that wants to be the frog
350M users approx 20M users
facebook looks more and more like twitter since the acquisition of friendfeed :
facebook wants to go public
+ = ?
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 43
Personal activities
Private real-time information
facebook?twitter competes with facebook on contextual ads, real-time search and CRM
20M users
Business purposes
Public real-time information
Users are more reluctant to have ads on facebook than on twitter.
Tweets have a larger public than facebook updates’.
More information is available on twitter than on facebook, making
real-time search more accurate.
Unless facebook succeeds in becoming public, twitter has a better position.
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 45
• Old news
• Steady content
• The web’s long term
memory
• Page rank
Need twitter’s real time
content
Need access to twitter
firehose to rank tweets
Google?twitter & Google cooperate in the field of real time search
20M users
• Real time news
• Dynamic content
• The web’s short term
memory
• Retweet rank ?
Need Google search
technology & traffic
They reached in October 2009 an agreement to include twitter
content in Google search results
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 46
Google?pushes initiatives towards a fragmented real-time content market...
• Google Wave could become a universal real-time conversation
platform
• Google will index the whole real-time web thanks to PubSubHubHub, a real-
time protocol
• In December 2009 Google struck formal partnership with facebook,
mySpace and twitter to index their live updates
=> The new version of the Google search engine, Caffeine, will emphasize
real-time search results including tweets, blog items, news articles and social
networking updates
...and a monopolistic real-time search market
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 48
Spam?A threat for Twitter
Tweetomercials Cons
Spammers use Twitter for two purposes :
Though Twitter is making progress on blocking spam (they introduced a “report spam”
function on October), spam could reflect as badly on Twitter as it reflected on Myspace.
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 49
• open source, no character limitation.
• belongs to Google
=> Google didn’t build a large enough community to compete with
Other micro-blogging services ?
For the time being, no other microblogging platform is in position to
compete with twitter : twitter rules them all!
•“Niche” market : enterprise microblogging
• Has a business model
• internal company information
=> Popular but doesn’t directly compete with Twitter
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 50
What is twitter?
What do people do with twitter?
Why did twitter grow so fast?
What business model for twitter?
Who could challenge twitter?
Conclusion
Summary
..…….
Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 51
Worst case scenario:Twitter may be asphyxiated by competition on all of its potential markets
By willing to maintain a wide-open “pulse of the world”, twitter may be
overwhelmed by businesses grounded in reality
Information
analysisReal-time
protocol
New protocols may
enable broadcasting
quicker, free and
less proprietary real-
time content
Eg : Pubshubhub
protocol as a push-
notification RSS may
offer real-time
broadcast to all
All social networks
foster real-time
status broadcasting,
and compete with
twitter on features
and privacy
Eg : Facebook as a
Twitter based on
real-life social
network
As real-time streams
grow from various
sources, the real
business model may
belong to companies
able to filter the
information.
Eg : Google Caffeine
as a competitor on
real-time search
Companies duplicate
Twitter interface but
specialize efficiently
on vertical markets
Eg : Yammer creates
a B2B Twitter with
specific distribution,
features and
business model
Social
Network
Specialized
Business tool
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 52
Best case scenario:Twitter may become....
Information
analysisReal-time
protocol
Social
Network
Specialized
Business tool
The most trusted
source for real-time
data
The first mode of
communication
between individuals
Robust platform for
analyzing massive
amounts of real time
data and behavior
Ensure customer
satisfaction and
loyalty, while
providing targeted,
geolocalized ads
…a standard of real-time information, data, and communication
between individuals and businesses. Twitter can be the leading
communication platform for commerce and people.
Real time
analytics CRM
E-commerce
Friend
updates
Contact mgmt
Social Search
Media
Geolocation
Services
Real time
feedback
$$$$$$$$
Human
behavior
Data
aggregation
Celebrities
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 53
The Innovation Agency
faberNovel, founded in 2003, specializes in designing and realizing innovative
projects.
Based in Paris and San Francisco, faberNovel builds on emerging technologies,
methodologies or practices to create new products.
faberNovel’s team combines the necessary talents and passion to turn their clients’
wishes into market realities: Idea > concept > prototype > product > success!
References: Avis, Groupe Suez, JCDecaux, L’Oréal, Orange, Pages Jaunes, RATP,
SFR, SNCF, Vinci, etc.
See our strategic studies on:
http://www.fabernovel.com/en/analyze/realisation/strategic-studies-and-surveys
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 54
Tracking and sharing innovation : since its beginning in 1978 in Paris, L’Atelier has
been helping executive committee in such fields as innovation and internet strategy.
L'Atelier teams have been actively involved in technology for years, acquiring solid
expertise and an impressive network of contacts. Strategic and operational insights
from L'Atelier experts have earned a reputation for both vision and provocative
thinking. A respected observer of developments in France, L’Atelier opened a San
Francisco office in 2006 and one in Shanghai in 2007.
http://www.atelier.fr | http://www.atelier-us.com | http://asie.atelier.fr
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Twitter Study • December 09 • faberNovel / L’Atelier de BNP - Paribas • 55
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