With or without you microblogging platforms like Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, and PlaceShout are gaining steam.
What use is that to the business-minded? At this point, not much. Later, though, as media converges – especially social media – one might imagine contextual advertising for diapers and baby wipes appearing next to the appropriate tweets. (The 140 character or less posts are called “tweets” on Twitter.)
Perhaps that’s what Google plans to do with recently acquired Jaiku, a platform similar to Twitter. Perhaps that’s where all this is headed as the bubble gets bigger: large companies swallow up social media, interlink them, and monetize them under one umbrella, carefully targeted by demographic.
So, microblogging is a useful public relations vehicle, or a place to be careful with your words as one PR pro found out recently. You connect with influencers, and have the opportunity to connect with the network of people they follow, but you also can keep tabs on projects – people love to talk about their projects.
Dave Winer, the self-titled original blogger and inventor of RSS recently Twittered (or tweeted?) about his New York Times “River” project, which allows readers to order their news to suit their preferences, rather than, as is tradition, allowing the editors to prioritize news.
Bloggers use microblogging as a supplement to their main blog by posting a short description of their latest blog post and a link. How long do you think it will be until the search engines begin crawling for that type of information?
One day, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will offer full search/social/traditional media advertising packages that pull all of these things under one roof – a managed campaign offering. And they’ll probably be expensive. Until then, choose your media carefully, and use it to its full potential.