twit·ter

v. twit·tered, twit·ter·ing, twit·ters

The blue bird sings

The above is the definition of old. Today, most of us know Twitter as a site we’re not quite sure how to use or see the value in. Tweet, Twit, Tweep…what does it all mean?

“Tweeting” is so popular it has even been used by the Obama camp from his candidacy in 2008 to his presidency today. His team even used the site recently to announce the U.S. President’s bid for the 2012 election.

It appears then that this “useless” site, is no light weight on the social media arena. Twitter is expected to generate 150 million in advertising revenue in 2011 and 250 million in advertising revenue in 2011! All of this money has been earned by the company employing a CPM based model of digital advertising called “Sponsored tweets” that was rolled out in 2010. Companies can bid on keywords so that when users search, their “Tweet” (which would typically be a special offer, dicount, link to their page etc) would show at the top of search results.

As a fan of the Mashable blog, I happened across this cool infographic that illustrates the journey of Twitter from a humble micro-blogging platform to a dynamic money making machine in a mere 5 years.

One of our clients, Mario’s Pizzeria, has been bitten by the Twitter bug and is currently using the site to engage with customers and host promotions. Will others follow suit?  Will Twitter become as popular here in Trinidad as it is worlwide, now that we see evidence of value? Only time will tell. Till then, I will keep on tweeting on!

Author: Taheera Tim Kee