Scoreboard Media Group, Internet Audience Development

Staring at the Digg frontpage right now.  2 pretty mundane stories from Arstechnica and two stories from HuffingtonPost about Hillary’s campaign death spiral.

Real diverse, guys.  Digg domain trust FTW!

…Uhh, start with a big one?

So, it’s been a week or so and I’ve genuinely tried to immerse myself into the Twitter ecosystem (note to self: stop talking like Zuckerberg) and I guess I’ll have to moderate my position from, “What a totally useless timesuck” to something like “Ok, this is kind of fun, but I have to get back to making money now.”

While I mostly agree with SEOBlackhat, Twitter is not completely useless.  There are plenty of business models that should engage the service and it definitely plugs into the broader Internet audience strategies of most businesses (yes, I said most businesses).  But it’s like Instant Messaging and nobody “got into the IM game” to make money directly.

Actually, that’s not true.  I had one friend mass-link-drop his Amazon storefront to his Buddy List back in ‘00.  $7 later, he felt like Mark Cuban (MC was actually cool back then) and I had to acknowlege that he indeed could make a buck…or seven…off of IM spamming.

Here’s what I have learned so far:

1. There are no direct monetization models that merit spending the time to build a Twitter “power account”.  There are, however, some very valid indirect audience and monetization benefits to acknowledging the Twitter userbase.
2. I think it was Mike Arrington who mentioned this previously, but things now break on Twitter before they break on the blogs.  If you have a brand, you need to be monitoring and/or engaging Twitter.  You may be able to put out a public relations fire or better retain your most vocal customers.
3. In terms of pushing your content or product, Twitter is basically an inbox or RSS aggregator for a lot of people now.  You should treat it as an audience medium/channel as the “open rates” are pretty high and there are downstream links.
4. A lot of Twitter users have blogs.  Bloggers link.  So, get to know more linkers.
5. Jason Calacanis is taking his personal branding whorishness to a whole new level.  Dude dropped a link on Twitter that was a live cell phone video feed of his dogs running around the pool.  That is both amazing and hopefully illegal after Congress passes the Nobody Should Have to Read, Hear, or View Everything You Do on the Internets Act of 2012.
6. I have met a dozen or so people who knew me from this blog.  So, about half my readers use Twitter.
7. I don’t know if this has been done yet, but I’m pretty sure if someone bulit the “Followback Girl” Twitter app, roughly 26 million college kids would use it between the hours of 12am and 3am.  This thing was built for booty calls.
8. I now know what sports teams the other SEO’s follow and who the degenerate gamblers are.
9. As soon as they figure out some sort of revenue model…and it doesn’t even have to generate more than $.50 RPM’s…Twitter is going to sell for a big number.   Twitter is big enough that they have enough audience momentum to have marginalized any of the other players who tried to take advantage of the very simple concept.  Twitter for the microblogging win.

With that said, I’m going to take my Tweets private.  As much as I’ll appreciate another way to interact with some friends and maybe make some new ones, I…unlike Calacanis…am not trying to put on a peep show.  Or is that a tweet show?

Update:  101 Ways to Use Twitter by Todd Mintz

After getting housed by the biggest hater on the planet in the dork-off (I mean, “blogging bet”) and then reclaiming my pride by winning a Reddit Xbox Challenge, I am now letting my pride, gambling addiction, and inability to turn away from any competition get the best of me yet again…a Twitter challenge.

We haven’t figured out what the total Followers # will be to win, but it’s going to be a lot, so please feed my downward spiral into overcompetitive burnout status just one more time:  http://twitter.com/brianprovost

The changes in the Digg algorithm over the last week have resulted in a lot of chatter among marketers, bloggers, and media.  Giving credit where credit is certainly due, I do think that Digg’s update definitely made it harder to push through non-organic popularity (read: spam).  In spite of these changes, my contention is that all these changes for “diversity” just make it harder for the littlest guy (the organic user) to participate in the process and it’s negatively impacted their product.

As Tiger Woods started winning tournaments and absolutely turned Augusta National into his personal playground, some tournament directors made the decision to “Tigerproof” their courses.  They started lengthening holes so that Tiger would have to hit long irons into greens rather than wedges.  This “Tigerproofing” was supposed to level the playing field again.

It was a phenomenal news story but it actually makes very little sense to anyone who has ever played competitive golf.  Sure, Tiger may have to go Driver -> 4-iron into a long par 4 now, but what about the other 95% of the Tour players that are faced with a par 4 that is essentially a par 5 for them now?  In the end, all this “Tigerproofing” did was favor Tiger and the longer players.  It’s all relative and a real “leveling” of the playing field would have been to shorten everything leaving everyone to score with wedges and putters (which, incidentally, Tiger probably still would have won as consistently).

So, when Digg raised the vote threshold to a pretty ridiculous standard for power accounts in the name of “diversity”, this was their attempt to “Tigerproof” their course from a select few users who had above average success in getting stories to the front page.  It’s a strategy that does hold some merit as many of those accounts were built by marketers or users with other agendas, but it’s also a slap in the face to many of their oldest contributors who never took a dime and acted as meta-guides to much of the content. 

Additionaly, these changes made in the name of “diversity” has also produced the unfortunate side effect of killing the freshness factor of their product.  In the era of short news cycles and instant consumption, it is taking almost a full day for yesterday’s news to make the front page.  Somewhere, Matt Drudge is laughing.

Now, if you raise the bar to success at Digg, who do you think will adjust and adapt…organic users who get very little benefit or power marketers who are incented to generate Digg traffic?  Over the long haul, it’s going to be the power marketers (and the one or two organic users who maintain some sort of religious affinity to Digg, aka “the never touched bewbs” crowd).

I’ve seen this type of inflection at least three times in Digg’s history.  It generally takes us a few months to recover…but we always do.  We are incented by profit.  We adapt.  The large publishing partners that Digg is getting into bed with have no problem bringing “diversity”, so they will succeed.  And the people Digg probably wishes would be there best users are left out to dry with that knife in their back.

The other question I’m fielding a lot is, “How do you think this plays into their strategy to sell Digg?”  First, it gives them something to point at when bigger, older media companies start talking about the risk of user generated ecosystems.  Secondly, it gets everyone talking about Digg again while they are soliciting buyers.  Thirdly, it certainly isn’t a coincidence that it drives many more page views for each session at Digg.  Crusty old media companies and advertisers love them some page views.

So, if you’re scoring at home:

1.  Good quality tweak.
2.  May impress acquirors of Digg.
3.  Because it appeases their risk models and page view appetites.
4.  But it pissed off their meta-users.
5.  And reinforced the chances for marketers over the long term.
6.  While ruining the “freshness” of their news.

I’m really not sure who wins here.  It’s certainly not bewbs.

You had to see this one coming.  One of the most opinionated and misogynistic sites on the Internet rolls out its new Pictures section and, BAAAAM, this is currently the top story on Digg today:

Planned Parenthood & Anal Sex (Original Digg thread entitled “Sex Hurts? Consider the Alternative”)

I love when I go to these Ivory Tower conferences on Internet Audiences and these agency jackasses who’ve never spent a day on Digg or built an account there try to tell advertisers what the “Digg Demographic” is.  Ladies and gentleman, these are your Digg users…

“Think anal sex hurts? No one cares what you think, you’re a woman.” -  Zihuatanejo 

“It didn’t take long for Diggs Pictures to result in porn. I for one welcome our new porn overlords.” - Spamzor

I really think that sums it up.  “The Ladies” probably haven’t been too kind to “Guy Who Spends All Day Gaming, Programming, Hating Microsoft, Loving Apple, and Watching Ron Paul on YouTube”.  And for that, “the Ladies” pay on Digg.