Social media:What’s next for Twitter(+)?

Trends in Communication & Information TechnologyJOUR 4871-003

How is social media different fromtraditional media in the context of news?

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500 million+ active users worldwide

2.5 billion (approx.) people using the Internet worldwide

400 million tweets per day posted (source: Gnip)

Revenue for Twitter

Promoted tweets(aka, ads in your Twitter stream)

Licensing full Twitterdata firehose

Revenue for Twitter

Promoted Trend hashtag: $120,000One allowed per day

New developments on Twitter

Expanded tweets(view content without leaving Twitter)

"We want to migrate to a world in which the 140 characters can serve as a caption for additional functionality," Costolo said. "We'd like that to include things like real-time data, even an application functionality."

Expanded tweets(view content without leaving Twitter)

Can be interactive: e.g., live polls for NBA All Star game showing real-time results directly within a tweet box

Or tweet about concert; expanded tweet allows buying tickets without leaving Twitter!

For news orgs, fewer click-throughs to their sites

Furthers atomization of news content

BUT, opportunity for media orgs to add e-commerce, revenue actions directly in tweet

Twitter likely to do this with Sponsored Tweets

Expanded tweets = New revenue stream?

New Twitter development: #Event pagesTwitter as the event-news destination site ... Curates/aggregates best content from others.

Twitter now a news company? But it does not CREATE any original content.

http://twitter.com/hashtag/debates or http://twitter.com/#debates

Coming developments at Twitter

Working on live Twitter curation tools

(probably free to newsrooms ... by end of 2012)

Will allow users, including journalists, to manually curate and display tweets to accompany breaking news events

Evolution of tweeting (and beyond)

1) 140 characters of text

2) Text + links + photos

3) Expandable: click to reveal image, headline/blurb/link, etc.

4) Coming soon: Expandable with rich content revealed (don’t leave Twitter)

5) NEXT?: Video

Instant video sharing: Next big thing?

Simple to post video clips (to Twitter, et al)Instagram of videoQ: Will it catch on the way Instagram did?Q: How could this be used in news reporting?