Robert Scoble has posted some thoughts on how Twitter's promised monetisation tools could work (worth reading the comment thread on that too).
Targeted advertising is at the heart of it, but the execution is non-interruptive and doesn't mess with the 140-character message format that we all know and many of us love.
I'm interested to hear from business owners and marketers on this. Do you see the value in it? Scoble's examples use big consumer brands - Amazon, Coke - and well-established online content brands - IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes.
The candidates in travel would be similar. Big operators and OTAs, review sites and travel guide brands all spring to mind.
Questions:
- Is there anything here for smaller businesses? Would it be a scalable programme with low barriers of entry, like Google AdWords, or are we looking at a small number of big Twitter-approved partnerships?
- Scoble's model uses 'a slide-down UI' - so unless I have misread, the commercial content of the SupertTweet is invisible by default. Will advertisers fancy that?
Recently in twitter Category
The 'SuperTweet': If Twitter monetisation looks like this, are you in?
November 21, 2009
Twitter trumpet - mine is bigger than yours
October 27, 2008
Whoever said blogging is all about personal vanity is probably right if they just read this post as an introduction to Web 2.0.
Users of Twitter - yes, Travolution is - can now see how popular they are via an index and ranking system known as Twitter Grader.
It measures how often a user 'tweets', number of followers, who is on your follower list, etc, etc.
Anyway, Travolution has a grade of 95.4 out of 100.
Our sister title Travel Weekly (twblog) is scoring 95.9 [HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!? :-)...] and TravelRants, for example, is up there with 97.1, the highest ranking Twit in Leeds, apparently (sorry, Darren!).
Interestingly the service does have a few handy features, such as indicating which other Twitterers it might be worth following.
Jemima Kiss (Guardian) and Mike Butcher (Techcrunch UK), for example, came up in our list.
....and so is STA Travel!
July 29, 2008
Amazing what can happen in just a few minutes.
STA Travel Buzz is following Travolution and they are also using Twitter in a very different way from lastminute.com's effort.
The page is maintained by "molly", a "travel-happy blogger gal who loves trains, planes and her EeePC" and obviously works for STA.
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
The lastminute.com-twitter debate is still rumbling on.
And it seems the floodgates are beginning to open.
This morning we have had two new followers to the Travolution Twitter account - Devon Hotels and Directline Holidays.
Devon Hotels is using the service very much like lastminute.com, plugging deals etc.
But Directline Holidays appears to using it in a different way, throwing random thoughts about travel into the ether.
The only problem they have, and need to rectify soon, is that the last update was March this year!
So based on the Twitter idea of responding to the question "What are you doing?", some might construe that the only answer from Directline over the past few months was "not a lot"!
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
Technorati tags: twitter
Do I want to follow lastminute.com on Twitter?
July 25, 2008
Travolution is currently followed by over 200 people on Twitter - the micro-blogging service and on-off darling of Silicon Valley.
[Follow Travolution]
Our latest fan is everyone's favoruite pink online travel agency, lastminute.com. The email arrived earlier today:
The OTA joined the service earlier this week, according to the updates list on the lastminute.com Twitter page.
This is the first UK OTA we have found to be actively using Twitter as a brand. There are plenty of individuals from travel companies using Twitter.
Anyway, inevitably, lastminute.com is using Twitter to flog, er, lastminute deals - five in one day this week.
It also has a decidedly garish screen!
So the question is this: do I want to follow lastminute.com - and have its updates getting in the way of other, perhaps more personally relevant people I'm following - if it is just going to serve deals to into Twitterland?
I can see why they are doing it - just not sure if I want it.
What do you all think?
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
Technorati tags: twitter lastminute
Sense of Perspective 2.0
May 31, 2008
Or not...
Despite the apparent economic slowdown and subsequent belt tightening, some might argue monetary madness reigns supreme.
Here in the UK, agency consortium Advantage Travel Centres is the subject of much speculation about its future following rumours that Australian travel giant Stella is on the brink of a takeover of the business.
The figure banded being talked about in most sensible circles is around £8 million.
Meanwhile, some might say, over in la-la land, micro-blogging service Twitter is apparently worth $95 million (that's £47 million).
This is on the back of Kayak's purchase of Sidestep last December for around $160 million (£90 million at the time) - a move Steve Hafner recently admitted was primarily for the traffic.
So the question: is traffic worth more than structure?
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
Twelve Days of Christmas 2.0
December 24, 2007
[With thanks to Les Explorers]
On the first day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
A tip to expand my business globally
On the second day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the third day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the fourth day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the fifth day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the sixth day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Six Twitter nudges,
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the seventh day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Seven Facebook pokes,
Six Twitter nudges,
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the eighth day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Eight Wiki entries,
Seven Facebook pokes,
Six Twitter nudges,
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the ninth day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Nine ladies blogging,
Eight Wiki entries,
Seven Facebook pokes,
Six Twitter nudges,
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the tenth day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Ten lords IM'ng,
Nine ladies blogging,
Eight Wiki entries,
Seven Facebook pokes,
Six Twitter nudges,
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Eleven podcasters podcasting,
Ten lords IM'ng,
Nine ladies blogging,
Eight Wiki entries,
Seven Facebook pokes,
Six Twitter nudges,
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my cool colleague sent to me
Twelve Stumblers stumbling,
Eleven podcasters podcasting,
Ten lords IM'ng,
Nine ladies blogging,
Eight Wiki entries,
Seven Facebook pokes,
Six Twitter nudges,
Five Second Lives,
Four YouTube videos,
Three Del.icio.us bookmarks,
Two social networks,
And a tip to expand my business globally!
Merry Christmas to you all...
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
The BOOT highlights an intriguing website called TopHotel100.com.
It is basically a catalogue of the most popular hotel-related websites on the web, based on the number of other sites on the list that "mention" [in other words, link] them.
[A bit like Technorati]
But the list itself is rather odd. The top ten goes something like this:
- 1 Tripadvisor.com 2,110,000 (mentions)
- 2 Booking.com 1,760,000
- 3 MySwitzerland.com 1,570,000
4 Orbitz.com 1440000
5 Holidaycheck.de 1,420,000
6 Marriott.com 1,330,000
7 Expedia.com 1,290,000
8 Voyages-sncf.com 1,230,000
9 Travel-library.com 1,080,000
10 Kayak.com 1,020,000
Is Kayak a "hotel" site? And VoyagesSNCF is a rail-led/online travel agency site. It seems astonishing that there are 1.5 million mentions of MySwitzerland.com contained on the other 312 sites.
As Hughes on The Boot says, he doesn't actually care as the overall list is quite a good who's who of decent hotel sites (with the odd bizarre exception), but there is certainly a faint whiff of the Link Love going on here a bit.
We've submitted the Travolution Blog to see how closely they monitor entries.
We were asked to add a link or logo in order to get listed. [TOP 100 HOTEL SITES]
Struggling to find the link on TripAdvisor and Expedia, unsurprisingly.
We'll keep you posted......
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
Technorati tags: hotel 100 lists
Join Travolution on Facebook
May 17, 2007
Thought it might be interesting to create a Travolution section on Facebook, the fantastic social networking site.
Anyone interested can look for "travolution" as a group and then simply join.
If we get a lot of people it may become our forum - its discussion 'wall' for members does exactly that.
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
Technorati tags: facebook
Launching the Twit List
May 15, 2007
Ok. Trying something out over the next few weeks on the blog.
To the right hand side you'll notice a Twitter.com box, featuring the latest random one-liners from the Travolution team.
For those not in the know, Twitter is a simple product that asks people to say in 140 characters what they are doing at any given moment. People are then invited to respond and start a conversation.
It is a smart little tool, rather fun, but is good demonstration of the way in which new social networking sites can grow so rapidly. It has taken the internet by storm in recent months.
I'm curious as to how many people are doing the Twitter within our community of travel and new media professionals, consumer bloggers and others.
[You do not necessarily need to be using the in-site widget like we do on the right hand side]
The list so far includes:
- Travolution [Twitter.com/travolution]
- Hotel-Blogs [Twitter.com/hotelblogs]
- BlogOnTravel [Twitter.com/blogontravel]
- Albert Barra [Twitter.com/albertbarra]
- Abel Gonzalez [Twitter.com/abelgv]
- MapMyName [Twitter.com/Cortomaltese]
- Explore Blogs [Twitter.com/explore]
- Blog de Viajes [Twitter.com/morrissey]
- Trivop.com [Twitter.com/trivop]
- Select World Travel [Twitter.com/selectworld]
Once a new name is published you can add them- by clicking on the Twitter URL alongside each name - to your list of Twitter friends.
Kevin May, editor, Travolution
Technorati tags: twitter Twit List
What is the Travolution Blog?
More content from the Travolution team, including random commentary, interesting stuff we've seen elsewhere and our usual sideways look at the travel industry.