An interesting writeup by Gregor Hochmuth on the Twitter model, a must read if you are keen on starting your own microblogging service with ReVou:
Twitter isn’t for everyone, and you may have dismissed the service a long time ago. But regardless of your own use, it’s hard to dismiss the phenomenon itself and the passion of so many that has built up around it.
No matter how long the outage du jour, Twitter users continue to stay attached to the service despite an ever-changing backdrop of alternatives.
Blogging isn’t for everyone either. But unlike blogging, Twitter enjoys a far a greater variety of users — they include people, many people, who would never think of starting a blog and people who would never touch an RSS reader. The 140 character limit is a plus for Twitter, but it isn’t all.
What explains the Twitter phenomenon then? What produces the positive feeling and the strong attachment among those who tweet? And moreover: How can other systems learn from this?
The answer lies in understanding Audience.
Twitter has a simple premise: You tweet & the message is pushed to your friends. The actual mechanics are slightly different (messages go to everyone who follows you, whether they’re your “friends” or not, assuming your stream is public) — but from a user’s perspective, the circle of receivers consists only of the people they know. Everyone else is part of a faceless crowd that’s hidden behind the follower count.
This simple premise holds the key to Twitter’s success: messages go to a well-defined audience. In the moment you release a tweet, you know who’s on the line and you have an idea of who can catch a glimpse of your message. @replies are the best illustration for this sense of audience: Even though Twitter is not a point-to-point message delivery system (let alone a reliable one), @replies are sent with the understanding that they will be read by the intended people because they are known to be in the audience. (Imagine a newspaper article that suddenly greeted a specific reader.)
Blogging on the other hand has no such clearly defined audience. An aspiring blogger who hasn’t crossed the chasm speaks into the void. Direct feedback can only come in the form of written comments (a relatively high barrier of effort) and it’s diminished by spam and vocal trolls these days.
FeedBurner’s subscriber count only provides the equivalent of Twitter’s opaque follower count and MyBlogLog didn’t solve this problem either.
So it’s not surprising that the majority of blogs are abandoned — the most-cited reason being “No one was reading it.” No one might be following your Twitter stream either, but Twitter is designed for network effects to take hold and given the natural reciprocity among groups of friends, it’s likely that most people have at least a handful of followers they know.
Back to Twitter: Why Audience works
Twitter works and enjoys such strong attachment because it provides real-time access to a well-defined audience. The backlog of all previous tweets is a guarantee of permanence (you can even search it) and you can catch up on it anytime. As a result, people use Twitter because they have an idea of who will see their lightweight messages and this sense of audience is reinforced by @replies, re-tweets and references in future conversations (online and offline).
Designing for the sense of Audience is a powerful tool to create cohesion and a sense of utility among users of a service. This lesson from Twitter can apply to many other services too and I dedicated a separate post to the principles of designing for Audience.
Yes we are finally adding Twitter plugin (free for all our customers) which we have previously added this feature for one of our client. Some of you might ask, what is this Twitter plugin and how will it affect me as a ReVou customer?
The twitter plugin essentially allows your members to post messages to their Twitter account via your ReVou website. This means that not only will the messages appear on your revou site but also at the same time on Twitter.com.
For ReVou customers or would-be customers, how would this feature benefit you? This twitter addon is a neat function that can convert Twitter users to use your site since messages posted on your revou site can also be updated on your member’s Twitter account.
To test our demo, go to www.revou.com/demo and login as: test for both username and password. Go to “Settings” and enter your twitter login info to start posting messages.
An interesting concept or rather a hybird between Yahoo Answer and micro-blogging allowing users to post questions/receive answers in a Twitter style manner.
ToAnswer is a new startup based on Twitter API which allows users to ask questions via Twitter.com and receive answers in ToAnswer
Bringing forward, the ToAnswer concept is an interesting business model for starting your own Twitter Clone that works like Yahoo Answers using our ReVou software. Site owners can easily run their own Twitter site targeting at a specific industry as discussion in our previous post on running your own twitter clone site allowing members to post questions and receive answers from experts or public members just like Yahoo Answers.
In case you can’t read from the screenshot above, Blippr lets users browse and rate commercial products including books, video games, movies, and music. The twist is that these reviews are incredibly short at just 160 characters, or the limit on an SMS message on your mobile phone. Twitter, the popular micropublishing tool pioneered this idea, and the folks at Blippr think it might work on product reviews.
The fact that I need to write more about it is also one of the reasons that Blippr doesn’t fit he bill for what it was created for. Sometimes reviews just need to be longer to give a product or service justice.
Coming back to the review system, the written reviews are coupled with a 1-4 rating system that uses emoticons (aww how cute) to establish a metascore for how good an item is. In addition to the rest of the Blippr users scores, you can get see a quick friends score as long as your Blippr friends have rated said item. These scores are shown at the top of each review and help sort through content.
Blippr doubles as a social bookmarking tool, letting you create custom lists and subscribe to the day’s hot list of products that are getting buzz. There are no ads on the site, so to supplement an income for the creators, the entire thing runs off affiliate links to various online retailers.
For all ReVou fans out there, we have finally release the multi-language addon for our micro blogging script so you guys can have your own local twitter clone site for your region. More features will be in place in the curent updates for our software
Ever wonder if you could run ReVou micro-blogging site in your native language? The good news is that ReVou allows you to run your own Twitter site by easily translating a single language file. Having said that, ReVou is currently looking for translators who can provide us professional language translation in the following languages:
Arabic
Chinese
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
If you have any other languages you can provide do feel free to contact us as well.
We all know there is no such thing as free lunch in the world. To reward you guys for the hardwork for the translation, we will be offering a 50% rebate for our software when you have been selected for the application. To apply, simply email us at sales@revou.com with your name and the language translation you will be performing and we will contact you once we have approve the application.
An interesting idea that could potentially transform Twitter into micro-payment and perhaps create another revenue source as a P2P payment service for a micro blogging site. Tipit a payment service designed for websites that want to add a ‘tip jar’ feature, has already added Twitter integration.
Current TipiT users can link their account with Twitter and be able to receive Twitter notifications whenever someone donates to their tip jar.
It would be an interesting concept to fully extend it to a payment service but the question is, will it be feasible?
It has occurred to me that many of our clients or potential ReVou customers would drop us an email or pose us a question during online chat asking “What can I do with another Twitter clone site?”. While it is true that competing head-on with a market leader such as Twitter.com might be difficult given the resources, funds and member base, it is not entirely impossible to run your own site like twitter or site owners can focus on more specific industries or different areas which a microblogging service can easily be added into using our ReVou software. The key emphasis is to have a sustainable business model using a microblogging application like ReVou on your website be it a brand new site or an existing website which you would like to integrate with ReVou.
For those who have no idea or looking for inspirations on how ReVou can help you create an entire new business on the web to make money and get more traffic , I have broken down the Twitter micro-blogging business model into 4 categories:
1. The “Generic” Twitter clone website
The “Generic” Twitter clone sites are defined as microblogging website that are catered for the mass-market which in many cases looks and feels like the Twitter.com itself.
·You have an existing website and would like to integrate a micro-blogging service just like Twitter.com, just like Jaiku with Google.com. The main idea here is not only to make more revenues by extending this service but rather also create user retention as they interact more using this platform with fellow members
·You are running a social networking website, community forums where you have a large member base to tap the power of micro-blogging
2. Geographical based Twitter clone website
Similar to the “Generic” Twitter clone with the exception that these types of websites are based on the various geographical locations such as China, Germany, Japan and so on.
You are looking to start your own twitter clone site targeted in your own local region. We also have clients who operate twitter clone sites who are working with their own local mobile phone service providers to integrate their custom SMS interface into ReVou micro-blogging script
You are looking at better chances of success at running a Twitter clone site targeted on a specific country usually where you are located at. By running a country specific twitter site, you can also command higher web ad revenues since the user traffic are more targeted (i.e by geographical location). Many client then ask this question, “Wouldn’t that essentially reduce my potential users since I can capture more users on a global scale?” Think of this simple logic: If there are more than 1.4 billion people worldwide using internet, what makes you think you can get all of them to use your service? Let’s say you are targeting at the China market which has more than 170million internet users. If you can effectively focus your marketing campaign at getting users in China to use your micro-blogging service, that would be almost as good as trying to get that many users on a global scale (plus without the risk of head-on competition with market leaders)
You are intending to offer micro-blogging in your country which has not be fully exploited
3. Industry-Centric Twitter clone website
In my opinion, this would be the best business strategy to implement a Twitter clone site because unlike geographical-based twitter clone sites you are not restricted to the number of countries and possibly compete with existing twitter clones in these countries. What I would recommend is always to start-off something you are best at therefore an industry-centric twitter clone site will be my #1 choice as there are virtually tons of industries which you can tap into by merging the idea of micro-blogging with the industry you are in. Let me give a couple of quick examples:
#1 Peter runs an online affiliate marketing website and he is thinking of new ways to retain more members on his website and also to find a more effective way to promote his products/services to current/new customers. RSS feeds on 1 hand is a one-way communication and forums though with the ability for interaction between users, it only limits to web-based communication. ReVou microblogging software enables Peter to implement micro-blogging capabilities to his website by allowing his “followers” to get updated information about what he is doing (for example his recent campaign on “Making $10,000 in 21 Days with only a domain and $50 startup fees”). By doing so, it will bring greater interest to his members to find out how effective is the campaign via micro-blogging and Peter can also update his profile whenever there are any new affiliate marketing seminars. During seminars, he can also post live news update to his micro-blogging site thanks to ReVou micro-blogging software.
#2 Henry is in the real estate industry for more than 10 years and he is trying to find a new business idea to bridge the gap between real estate agents and their customers. He discovers that ReVou is an excellent platform that provides this innovative service where customers can get real-time news on property prices and news related to property which advice what they should do with their property or the current property market fro reliable and credible sources (real estate agents or agencies). Not only that, customers can choose receive news via SMS, their favorite IM such as MSN or Gtalk as well as reducing the spend time reading blogs, newspaper trying to extract news information related to property market. Real estate agents on the other hand can interact with the customers, close deals via ReVou microblogging platform. In short, ReVou provides a whole new experience between real estate agents and customers which provides quick and accurate up-to-date information.
Examples:
It is my sole purpose not to give any examples here because the aim is to get you to involve in the industry you are FAMILIAR with and not trying to find out which is the best industry and then start up a Twitter clone site.
4. Twitter with a “twist” Twitter clone website
Twitter with a “twist” are typically sites that try to “innovate” twitter by adding new ideas and functionality to micro-blogging such as adding pictures with messages or even audio files.
Twitxr allows you to share pictures from your mobile phone. ReVou application currently allows you to share pictures via the web interface when posting messages
Each message has a audio attached. Blip also allows the user to buy the song via Amazon.com
Would be ideal if:
You are a person with a bagload full of ideas which you can create the next twitter with innovative features. This would be a success if you are able to merge your idea with Twitter, by bringing micro-blogging to a whole new level
You are a hardcore programmer who likes to meddle with source codes, add new features to your twitter clone site
You are an investor or have funds since creating Twitter with a “twist” using our ReVou application will involve custom programming and unless you are a programmer. You need to be prepared to fork out extra funds to start up such a website
ReVou offers 100% full source codes for the programmers out there who are interested in making their own unique Twitter website. We also offer custom programming services for webmasters who have no programming knowledge but has interesting ideas which we can help in turning these ideas to reality.
