by eubie

Good advice for reporters, editors on social media — reading around May 27

PaidContent: Advice For NYT’s Social Media Editor: Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken—And Do A Lot Of Listening — good advice for reporters and editors who use Twitter, blogs, etc.
While publishers continue to debate about whether people will pay for online editorial content and how to charge them for it, consumers are pumping millions of dollars into the app ecosystem through both subscriptions and micro-payments.


by eubie

The Awesome Potential of Retweet — reading around May 26

TechCrunch: The Awesome Potential Of Retweet

The ability to retweet retweets is critical because it means that messages could spread throughout the twittersphere frictionlessly. I believe this would make Twitter the leading way that memes spread in our culture.

TechCrunch: This is Not a Sponsored Post: Paid Conversations, Credibility & The FTC

Under new guidelines proposed by the Federal Trade Commission, brands and bloggers both may be held liable should either the FTC or scorned consumers deem that their actions or claims misguided them, or misrepresented the actual performance or efficacy of the product or service in question.

CV1_TNY_06_01_09.inddAll Things Digital: This Week’s New Yorker Cover, Brought to You by the iPhone drawn with an iPhone app called Brushes — nice

Calculated Risk: Agricultural Land Prices Decline Sharply in Q1

In real terms, the current increase in farm prices wasn’t as severe as the bubble in the late ’70s and early ’80s that led to numerous farm foreclosures in the U.S.

AllThingsDigital: Hearst: Zombie Seattle Paper Doing Better Than the Original — also Puget Sound Business Journal 2 months out, web-only P-I claims more readers

TechCrunch: Not Safe: Poll Finds 1-in-4 Americans Text While Driving

WSJ: Recession Turns Malls Into Ghost Towns — including a focus on Charlotte’s Eastland Mall.

Calculated Risk: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Deficit Increases

With companies moving away from defined benefit plans, there will be fewer companies paying for insurance in the future – so the PBGC will probably have to be bailed out.

by eubie

Twitter is growing fast. Maybe too fast.

Twitter has 32 million accounts, but it has few employees focused on sales or growing the business at this time. Is this any way to build a business?
Twitter isn’t even clear yet on what it’s business plan is, according to today’s WSJ article. With no visible way to monetize these users, there’s a question about its long-term ability to pay the bills.

Obvious possibilities are to sell advertising along the tweets or to sell it as service used by companies. But Twitter’s top execs have not moved very far with either option.

Twitter is an interesting development in the web world. It will have to walk a fine line between finding ways to make revenue from the growth without becoming a burden and tempting users to turn to competitors.