Twitter and Ambient Suggestions

By Brooks Jordan | December 8, 2008

Ad agencies like Publicis are working hard to redefine advertising and marketing, but one can bet that innovation that really changes the game is going to pop-up at some smart, little company in an unexpected way.

Maybe that’s what Tim Hanlon at VivaKi, the investment unit of Publicis, is thinking, too, when he says:

I think it’s clear that the traditional process of agencies is clearly not going to survive the digital era without significant changes to our approaches.

Twitter? That could be. Because what changes the game is advertising that is consistently worth my time, your time.

Nick Bilton, who is working on this sort of thing at NYTimes, points out that when you use Twitter a stream of tweets follow you that give very specific information about what you care about (e.g., coconut milk-based ice cream).

And as importantly, the people around you (your followers, people using the same keywords, close geographically, etc) have a tweet stream that is relevant to yours (e.g., they like mint chip coconut milk-based ice cream).

Nick gives an example:

If I send a tweet saying “I’m looking for a new car does anyone have any recommendations”, I would be more than happy to see ‘smart’ user generated advertising recommendations based on my past tweets, mine the data of other people living Brooklyn who have tweeted about their car and deliver a tweet/ad based on those result leaving spammers lost in the noise. I’d also expect when I send a tweet saying ‘I got a new car and love it!’ that those car ads stop appearing and something else, relevant to only me, takes it’s place.

In other words, if Twitter could surface these “likes” and the related and relevant “likes” from those in your Twitterverse, then they could give you what are really more suggestions, and even the occassional full-blown recommendation, in your stream of @replies.

It wouldn’t feel like advertising as we know it now, these type of ambient suggestions, and that’s exactly why it would be a significant change.

  • http://www.unstructuredventures.com/uv Taylor Davidson

    Brooks: have you ever dug into the ideas of VRM (vendor relationship management) and Doc Searls? Think of it as “advertising your intentions to companies” (rather than “companies advertising to people”), and it's pretty close to the ambient suggestion mechanism you're thinking about. Drop Ethan Bauley a line about it, I'm sure he'd love to tell you about the principles of VRM :)

  • http://konterkariert.tumblr.com konterkariert

    read my article about Summize, Twitter investor Fred Wilson commented “great post”"Twitter starts Web Data Mining with Summize”http://konterkariert.tumblr.com/post/42355329/t...I also see a big potential in Twitter.Why did Twitter buy Summize?“Summize’s mission is to search & discover the topics and attitudes expressed within online conversations.”Jay Virdy: “At Summize, we assembled a small, quirky, but highly efficient and experienced team to build a powerful platform to extract user opinions from blogs and review sites. Dr. Abdur Chowdhury, our cacographic Chief Scientist, applied machine learning techniques to understand how users express sentiment using common words and polarizing phrases.Om Malik: “Just as AdSense serendipitously turned Google into a giant cash register, with Summize, Twitter can take the first step towards a business model.”See also the startup Peer39 – they are also doing Sentiment Analyis and their business model is Advertising – http://www.peer39.com/ “The next revolution in advertising? Peer39 thinks it’s semantics”http://venturebeat.com/2008/06/27/the-next-revo...Peer39’s firepower comes from a set of executives and board members with backgrounds in either semantics or advertising. Eytan Elbaz is on their board. He helped invent Google AdSense and sold Applied Semantics to the search giant.

  • http://brooksjordan.name brooksjordan

    Taylor, I always think of VRM as “CRM inside out.” But, I like your angle on it or deeper understanding. Why shouldn't we be able to signal our intentions to companies, right? It's a conversation.

  • http://brooksjordan.name brooksjordan

    I will read it, thanks. You're right Summize could be the start of a Twitter business model.

  • http://www.ethanbauley.com Ethan Bauley

    Brilliant links hereDig this:http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/05/social-search...Email me for an inviteAlso dig:33across.com

  • http://www.ethanbauley.com Ethan Bauley

    Re: the NYT article you linked toThat's like obsessing over buggy whip handles in 1907

  • http://brooksjordan.name brooksjordan

    Ethan, Aardvark looks really interesting. Thanks for pointing. I'd love an invite.

  • http://brooksjordan.name brooksjordan

    Truly.

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