As of 8AM this morning we have been pounding the keys on our various forms of computers. Several of the Smith Gifs are stuck at home but working remotely. Ernie.. the machine is editing in DC some car ads, and Suzy and I are here getting the office running. We have parking.. Woohooo. Only needed to kill two spaces for a place to put the snow. Just in time for some more of the white stuff tomorrow..
I have dug out my home.. sorta 4 times so fare this weekend… Make the trek to the office… Starting digging out. The drifts in front of the office here in Falls Church are close to 40 inches… But we need to get to work? Starting to dig in… dig dig dig…CRACK! The final of three snow shovel snaps…. Poof… so… Cue the crickets… I will hopefully have figured out a way to have the parking area cleaned up by tomorrow… mmmmmmmwait, there are those little packets of salt from fast food places over in the kitchen… yeah… we are all set…. 
So, just yesterday CNN.com published a story titled “Has Twitter Peaked.” According to the article, Twitter usage (measured by unique visitors) has effectively flat-lined since the middle of last year. While nobody agrees on the actual numbers, most of the web audience measurement firms (comScore, Compete, Quantcast) agree that traffic to the site peaked in July / August and actually declined by the end of the year.
Twitter Traffic – June 09 - Dec 09
Should we care about this? Does this signal the end of Twitter as we know it?
I hope so, because Twitter really needs to change and there are some signs that it may be morphing into something that might actually be useful for business.
Twitter has taken a number of good steps to encourage user engagement. They have allowed users to create lists of followers. For example, I can create a “friends” list, or a colleagues list. Using the list feature, tweets from my “friends” or “colleagues are separated from my full tweet stream. It makes it easier for me to follow them, reply and re-tweet. It’s not perfect, because the Twitter interface is awful. But, since I can now separate followers into lists of my own making, it makes an unbelievably bad user interface a little more tolerable.
The other step Twitter has taken to encourage user engagement and conversation is add the Twitter trends and Local trends feature. This is a pretty cool feature because it allows a user to see what conversations are trending across all of Twitter, or within your local area. I like it. I like it a lot, as it encourages people to become more engaged on the site and with each other, and that is what social media is all about.
So has Twitter peaked? It certainly looks like it has in the short-term. Is this the end of Twitter as we know it. I actually hope so, because I think that is a good thing. This plateau, this peak is going to force Twitter to address user issues and (hopefully) figure out what they want to be when they grow up.
If I were king for day, I would like to see Twitter do the following:
1) Completely redesign the user interface / experience. The current interface, with tweets stacked-up in chronological order, is like reading a roll of toilet paper. It’s too easy to miss tweets that you may want to see. Look at applications like Tweet Deck or HootSuite and copy them. For the most part, these applications get the interface right.
2) Let me select the followers from whom I can receive DM’s. And while your at it, ban auto-DM’s. They are spam – always – in all cases.
3) Expand Twitter profiles to include more demographic information, and give users the option (like Facebook) of filling it in. At a minimum, allow users to add personal interest information (i.e., music, movies, fitness, cooking, health & wellness, etc.) about themselves. And then let me search on that so that I can find followers who share my interests.
There are many other items on my list. This is just the top three. I’ll be curious to see how Twitter morphs over the coming months. It will continue to be a lot of fun to watch!
Isn’t technology wonderful? So here I am, on a Virgin America flight (love this airline, BTW), connected to WiFi for free. Meanwhile, Matt is next to me, ever the art director, shooting great pics like this out the window and then downloading them for us to use. Meanwhile, our client is next to us playing with the latest app and Matt and I are updating various blogs and Twitter accounts. What did we do without all this?
But then that’s how it happens. Life sneaks up on you and before you know it you’re crossing the country to shoot two new ads with crazy-talented people for a fantastic client (I am purposely withholding the client’s name and company as this is some secret stuff that all will be revealed shortly - stay tuned!).
Also in a blink Matt and I are discussing the fact that the agency has evolved - again - into a content creating machine, realizing that it’s all just content. Today on the plane, we are creating content while returning from a shoot where we created more content. TV ads are content. Radio is content. Print, content. Web … well, you get the idea. It’s all content being delivered on various vehicles - today it’s TV, YouTube, Radio, microstites, Twitter, etc. But who knows what will be the content-delivery-mechanisms of tomorrow?
You know what? It doesn’t matter, it’s just content. And we are really good at creating amazing content if we do say so ourselves - and we do!
So here’s a little content for you today - a view taking off from LAX heading back to DC. Enjoy the ride.
Yesterday we noticed that our web site was now in the hands of a hacker. Someone had gotten into our shorts and taken our site away. OK.. So the part that still makes me scratch my head is why? The game? OK sure, I get that, but what game? There isn’t anything on the site of any value, and it isn’t like we have anything to protect on the site. It’s ads for gods sake! And 30 minutes later, we are back on line, still scratching our heads. Now, Turk 1923 who is the hackers name… and copyrighted by the way… Good thing the hacker is trying to protect themselves from would be copyright thieves…. is all over the web doing this, there is even a YouTube Video.. For now we are alive and up and running. If for some reason the Hackers come back, we will of course deal with that again.. It’s funny really, and to be honest we are honored by the hack… After all it was only a couple years ago that we would beg people to visit us online… if they could find us. Now they are finding us in Turkey….But next time not the lame drawing of a wolf…It was like Borat hacked us.
Like a 12 year old boy from the rust belt the Turks love a wolf.
Our Christmas Tree
What a year this has been. Global recession. 10 percent national unemployment rate. Adam Lambert appears on the American Music Awards. Smith-Gifford enters the top ten, and named the fastest growing agency in Washington DC.
Oy! What a year!
As we rush through this holiday season, trying to cram in every last party, every luncheon, every happy hour—as we try to balance deadlines and our intense work load, we sometimes forget the most important things – our friends, our family, and you – our clients.
So, this is a time to say “thank you.”
Thank you for your support this year. Thank you for the confidence you have shown to us. Thank you for being a part of our growth. Thank you for allowing us to flex our creative muscle.
We look forward to the promise of 2010. It’s a new decade, and we look forward to entering it with you.
Happy holidays from the team at Smith-Gifford.
Peace!
PS – Photo courtesy of Daisy! It’s a beautiful tree.
We are open, the parking is clear and all the computers are set on fast retail mode. Woo hoo! And no heart attack!
It’s fascinating to see how Twitter has evolved over the past 12 months. A little more than a year ago, fewer than five-hundred thousand people a month used Twitter. Since then, monthly traffic has exploded, and now according to Quantcast, monthly traffic exceeds 20 million unique visitors.
Twitter Traffic Since the Beginning of Time
Now, I firmly believe that a very high percentage of this meteoric growth was caused by what I call “The Rise of the Bots and Spammers.” For a period of about three to four months (roughly May through August), you couldn’t log into your account without being assaulted by Britney Spears porn videos, ads for teeth whitening, erectile dysfunction and more. Twitter was infected with serial spammers. Mashable wrote a great article about it last August, highlighting the top 20 Twitter spammers. Just a few months ago, your Twitter account was infested with profiles that looked like this:
To its credit, the team at Twitter worked very hard over the next few months to address the problem. Spam on Twitter remains a problem to this day, and it will always be a problem. But, from my perspective, the problem has been greatly reduced.
So, even after taking care of serial spammers, millions of people are now using Twitter who have never used it before. And what has happened? Well, a lot of these Twitter newbies have very bad Twitter manners. Back in the day (a year ago!), Twitter was such a warm and friendly place. If you followed someone, they would almost always follow back. If you re-tweeted something, people would acknowledge you, and thank you for the re-tweet. It was all about connecting, building community, sharing and participating in a grand social experiment.
So, here are a few things that I think everyone should do to make Twitter a nice place to live.
Acknowledge re-tweets. It doesn’t take much. Just a simple “thank you for the RT” will do very nicely. Geez, somebody thought that something that you wrote was worthy enough to pass along to to all of their followers. Thank them for it, for cryin’ out loud!
Engage with your followers. Again, it’s the polite thing to do! Twitter is a contact sport and it’s like going to a big party where you may not know everyone in the room. You can stand alone in the corner and not talk to anyone. But why bother doing that? Re-tweet posts that you think are interesting, funny, thought-provoking. Comment on the tweets of others that you think are interesting. In short, get involved and engage.
Chris Brogan wrote a really good Twitter Etiquette Guide a few months ago. It’s a good start for people new to Twitter.
I’m longing for the good old days — a year ago seems so distant now — when Twitter was a sweet place to be. Hopefully this will help.
Durring this convergance of traditional marketing and digital media that we have been going through. One never ending theme keeps coming up. Click rates and bounce rates vs just simple marketing. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told by clients. Just get clicks. I don’t care what trick you use. A game… hit the squeel on the head. Whatever. The same goes for many new companies that think that just by getting a web site up you have done your branding and the company is now in full swin
This morning on the Today Show there was a story on fake web sites touting incredible prices and the fact that they these fake web sites are designed to just get your credit card and personal information. By the way … A genius move on the part of the scammers out there. They rely on the fact that the consumer is just driven by price and deals on the web. So why is that? Well, mostly because for the past decade web sites have been built on mostly rational terms. Branding and traditional marketing concepts have been shoved aside like old women at a sorority dance. Well, here we are. Some of the big guys have figured it out. But what about a small web site? I feel very strongly that we are now entering a new phase in the interactive world of marketing. The power of emotional branding in the interactive world is now upon us. It’s now not be just about clicks and tricks. Consumers will shop by emotion again. Traditional tried and true marketing principals will be able to come out in the sunshine. And good sound branding will actually help guide how and what is said in the interactive world. Look at Twitter, it’s very much emotion, Facebook, emotion, and now yes… your website click though rate… Are brand rate measurement tools next.
According to the Washington Business Journals Book Of lists, SmithGifford, has broken into the top 10 sized agencies in the Washington DC area. Also of note is that we are the fastest growing from 16 to 9. We are also excited because all the work despite the growth, is the best this year in our short 7 year history. Another bit of news is that now we are just about 30% digital from last years 0%. And next year we are projecting at least 50% of our billings should be from digital media. Not necessarily a sign of the times, but marks a year long shift here at SmithGifford. Last year around this time we made a conscious choice to be media neutral and focus on content based on sound strategy. The freedom that allows us is amazing. New media channels are popping up daily. We have also undertaking a relationship with SGS a new firm that when working with media, has media at the table in the creative and strategic work. The results of that relationship are truly inspirational. more to come.