Algorithmic, a more Facebook-style feed to Twitter is coming?
Many attentions have been grabbed in the world of Social Media following the news being leaked out about Twitter looking at turning their much loved social media platform in to a more Facebook style model… Many have not been too impressed.
I would say, Twitter stands out for me when it comes to marketing a business brand and constructively building an active and target audience. Following a poll I placed out recently, a lot within the UK property industry would seem to agree:
So what exactly are Twitter thinking about doing then? It mostly points towards how Tweets are presented to you, though of course Twitter have been kind of introducing this over the last year already with their ‘While You Were Away‘ feature. There will supposedly be an algorithm that will organise how tweets are presented to you in popularity order over what we have been used to (with a few sponsored posts sandwiched in-between) in a lastest tweet first fashion.
Now we are being told there will be an opt in and opt out option for this so we are in no need to panic, though what this could also mean is that if proved successful, then Twitter will enforce it on all members. We hope that it does not mean, which would be an incredibly silly move by Twitter, that sponsored / paid for posts and accounts are shown to us first over the organic content – let’s face it, we follow who we want to for a reason and 99% of the time we will reject advertising of external messages / accounts – Rather like Google’s mess up of Youtube and all the enforced ads before and during videos we wish to watch and enjoy.
It obviously has caused the guys from Twitter to take note, ie Jack Dorsey:
I have spoken to one of two other social media geeks and they say it could turn out to be good for many Twitter users, especially those using the platform for increasing their brand / name exposure. Twitter will reward those who share regular content which gets the best engagement meaning those who put more effort in to Twitter will end up with the best results… Though of course this could also mean that many small businesses could see their exposure dropping and the giants of each industry sector see their engagement rocketing – ie independent estate agents being pushed out and the corporates, who’d have money to invest in advertising on social media, succeeding? I personally love the banter, comments and feedback I see on Twitter from great independent estate agents across the UK, I would not want that to drop away from what I see on Twitter and replaced with standard marketing content.
It would appear from Jack’s comments on his Twitter feed that they will acknowledge the feedback from their users, but is this a drive to increase revenue which will ultimately please the board of directors and share holders? Facebook has for many, ruined timelines by adding so many adverts, but should we just accept this as their platforms are in-fact offered to us for free and we should accept that they need to make some revenue to enable them to exist?