The more I think about the holistic value of Twitter and the impact will have on the media business in the world, the more I am convinced that Twitter will be more valuable than Facebook in the time to come.
Consider my reasoning:
Media (Print and TV) as we know it is fraught with inefficiencies. Check what these are, and how Twitter overcomes them:
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Newspapers report events hours after they happen. TV sometime covers news on the spot but there are delays sometimes of TV crews reaching the News Spot.
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Twitter is immediate. News at it happens. From where it happens. Relayed in milliseconds.
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Newspapers and TV give me lots of news that I don’t need. It a flood of content, of which probably only 1-2% is what is useful or what I was looking for
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Twitter is distilled HEADLINES content. 140 characters. The best part is that the headline can be linked to a bigger piece, so it allows me to bite what I want to chew.
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I have to buy a news paper or switch on a TV channel to get my news. I have to GO TO news.
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Twitter comes to me on my phone. My news COMES to me.
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I don’t trust half the folks who report the news. Specially journos I haven’t heard of!
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I follow only credible sources and hence have implicit trust in those I have chosen to follow.
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No one really ‘calls’ me and tells me to catch news that I may have missed.
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People retweet. I follow people I like. So, their news becomes interesting to me.
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I think the real value creation is that Twitter BREAKS DOWN the millions of pieces of news of a newspaper or a TV transmission INTO 140 Character HEADLINES.
Its the micro micro journalism with micro micro targeting that is the massive value of twitter.
Also, Twitter allows ME to be a journalist!! yeah!
I am not Fareed Zakaria or Larry King, but hey – I do have 1150+ odd ‘followers’ on my Twitter account (for the record and before being rebuked, I DO NOT FOLLOW ANYONE – so these 1150 people have chosen to follow me JUST on the basis of what I Tweet!
– Now consider The Value creation potential of Twitter by glancing at this screen shot:
Just look at the image & imagine the power of advertising that Twitter brings to the table. Walmart can advertise in an around all the tweets that are based on its Brand and can easily influence people to react as they read the tweet.
IMAGINE THE POTENTIAL OF WALMART ADDING ON THE SPOT COUPONS TO RELATED TWEETS!
This means that Twitter with its specific topic targeting + Location can become a GROUPON of unimaginable proportions!
I believe that Twitter will unlock lots of value through targeted advertising the way Google Ads has done.
Check out the Market Caps of some select Media Companies:
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Facebook’s current valuation of 75 Billion. Looking at the charts above, its not difficult to project why Twitter cannot usurp media valuations of some of the old stooges above and be a Facebook beater.
******
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Shucks – Fortune has another opinion (but at least rodinhood beat Fortune to a new Twitter story)! Check – https://bit.ly/trh-twitter2
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
OMG – you have to read this interview on the FT and then tell me what u think !! https://on.ft.com/trh-twitter3
Daman Anand
Alok,
I have a question in my mind. The person who first tweeted from abbottabad was tweeting about all the activity hours before (helicopters and all that) but he never knew this was about Osama. He must have come to know about Osama’s death from TV or Radio and then only he understood that he was tweeting about Osama’s operation (with out actually knowing it). So here, news came first or TV or Radio and not on Twitter. What do you think?
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Nope. It was Twitter.
Just copying the relevant para from Jyoti’s link below:
‘That speculation was not aired out on television immediately, but it did erupt on Twitter and other social networking sites. Wishful thinking about bin Laden’s death ricocheted across the Web — and then, at 10:25 p.m., while Mr. Obama was writing his speech, one particular tweet seemed to confirm it. Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, wrote at that time, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.”’
Lalit Bhise
Hmm .. I hardly use twitter .. cause most of the updates I hear / post are somewhat personal and twitter does not give me much of privacy .. but if I want to really really open my mind I can do it with fb simply cause I am sure only the people I trust would consume it … fb 1- twitter 0.