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In Twitter’s Scoble Problem, a Business Model

Anyway, to put Scoble and his Tweets in context, let’s assume for a minute that he always has 25,000 followers and he sent them 12,000 updates which are all 140 characters long, the maximum size allowed by Twitter. Again, hypothetically speaking, assuming each update is 100 bytes, then 12,000 updates generated used up 30 GB of data. (12000 updates * 100 bytes)* 25,000 = 30000000000 (30 GB) So here we come to the good part. This massive database of followers is what Twitter should turn into a business. Twitter should charge Scoble, Leo, me, Michael Arrington and anyone else who has more than 100 friends and followers. How about something simple? $10 a month for 1,000 subscribers. 25,000 subscribers means someone like Scoble should be paying them around $250 a month.

Let’s take it a step further. Twitter should limit people to 500 free messages a month. Any more should come in a bucket of, say, 1,000 messages for $10. Businesses like Comcast that want to use the service for commercial reasons should pay for the service, and so should startups like Summize, which want to build their businesses based on Twitter’s API. This would also fit the Freemium business model that Twitter investor Fred Wilson so loves. And at the same time, it would help Twitter overcome its abhorrence for adding advertising to the messages. I think many of us have a lot to gain from the service: My alerts about my posts on the system are a form of advertising for my work, and generate enough attention that paying for the service makes lot of sense.

How did I do that? Well, I was watching Twitter on Google Talk. Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake WHILE IT WAS GOING ON!!! Over the next two hours I pointed at anyone who had info about the quake on my Twitter account. It’s amazing the kind of news you can learn by being on Twitter and the connections you can make among people across the world. I fear a large casualty loss. The epicenter was 50 miles from Chengdu, which has about 10.5 million residents. Already reports are coming across of buildings that have been knocked down.

UPDATE: Online Journalism Blog has a lot more details about what happened on Twitter tonight. From the Frontline blog has even more. UPDATE2: Global Voices Online has links to videos and other Twitter and blog reports. UPDATE3: here’s a timeline of what first Tweets looked like.

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比如Pownce支持的Links，可以将youtube和flickr内嵌在某个post里面，这就是话题的来源。我没有统计数据，但统观起来，这些links不但达到了信息散播和传达的目的，而且回复数目比非链接的确要多一些。这些回复就是社区性的养料，而Links这种功能本身就提供了这样的养料生产平台。

Event这种功能更是如是。笔者住在悉尼，因此常常关注悉尼的Powncers。在悉尼，Events的公告非常多，我看到过的BBQ、Bar party等等的聚会通知不胜枚举。也就是说，Pownce甚至成为了线上社区线下化的途径。当然，笔者确未参加过这些聚会，无法给出线下聚会的评价。但这种社交性的延伸，在企业运作角度而言，笔者很欣赏。Pownce在未来可以对此多做文章，形成俱乐部或者其余一些可盈利模式，对其盈利模式的探索很具建设性。终究没有哪个mini blog现在能够有线下盈利模式的机会，更不要说尝试。

Pownce里有一个写诗的美国女孩，post出自己的诗歌，然后说如果能够得到15个decent responses就会贴出下一首。我们可以在这件事中看到，用户已经可以做self-promotion了，可见这种社区性在mini blog中的需求是可以这样具像化的。而具体的运作，仍然在于为用户提供了多少赋权。Twitter的重点在于“发生”，沟通的基础在于“做过什么”； Pownce的重点则是“议论”，沟通的基础在于“说过什么”。 Pownce对“说”这一功能的赋权相当之大，同时也赋予了相应的责任。一旦将评论打开，自己的言论随时有可能被跟风或被抨击。但这的确是社区化的基础。Twitter有@功能，那又怎么样？两个人互相@，然后就能整合起一个话题的主线么？如果有第三个人想参与，怎么办？Twitter能让三个人一起@么？一群人呢？

I'm sorry to say that I had previously received an approach from two charities - one via Facebook and the other by email - but hadn't yet made a donation.  However, Jeremiah's Twitter message changed that. Charities, take note...

There are at least 30 people who have indicated they’ve given through Jeremiah’s updates on Twitter, and more – no doubt – who have given privately.

When I logged on to my desktop Twitter application (sad, I know) it was alive with Tweets about the earthquake in China. Most of them were from the celebrated technology blogger Robert Scoble, who is famous, perhaps notorious, for receiving a Twitter message every second of the day. He is based in California, but thousands of miles away from the quake he was providing breaking news about it, linking to sites like the BBC and the New York Times, even providing a first picture - though how authentic that is remains to be seen. He now claims that Twitter had the breaking news even before the United States Geological Survey, which provides early warnings of seismic events.

For U.S. visitors, traffic has almost doubled from February to April alone. The service is now pulling in nearly 1.2 million people per month. Twitter is growing very fast, and just as we’ve noted, Compete believes Twitter’s recent coverage in the mainstream press (for events like helping the American student get out of jail in Egypt and coverage of the China earthquake) is helping to fuel this growth.

Twitter Changes Everything - Even Earthquakes

My friend updated me fast on the social networks he uses: apparently he relies mostly on Facebook after having dumped Twitter. As I followed this story via my Twitter account, Twitter developed in just a few hours into an excellent information tool, combining different sources of information. I knew more about the earthquake than many people in China.

But just like blogs made two-way conversations on the Web relatively cheap, easy, and quick for the masses compared to previous methods (such as personal Web sites), conversational models on the Web have continued to evolve.  Recently, microblogging and social aggregation platforms like Twitter and Friendfeed have emerged to offer alternative models that are compelling for a number of significant reasons. 

Users of the latest social media tools are far more likely to post several times a day, more likely dozens of times, each one forming a new conversational beachhead.  This can be overwhelming, but it can also be enormously stimulating and rewarding, as a form of collaboration, cross-pollination, brainstorming, serendipity, news gathering, and countless other activities provide one with a continuous connection to the broader world.

這幾天因為八搶三戰打的正火熱，許多推友（twitter 上的朋友）紛紛將自己的顯示符號改成 CT 版來應援。昨天鄭龜先生興起了一個想用推特 icon 做應援大圖的 idea，於是我也花了短短幾個小時，用 Rails 寫了這樣一個應援制服的收集展示區。

Well said. Very quickly the story turned to Twitter/Scoble/beating USGS by 3 min. I also did not like watching how TechMeme rewarded a lot of A-list tech blogs and aside from Global Voices Online was not able to identify other great sources of English content on the Earthquake such as Shanghaiist or Danwei. Another example of self-reflective narcissism at work. At least Jeremiah Owyang tried to use his bully pulpit of social media to ask people to have compassion and give to the Red Cross. Kudos to Jeremiah for that. Posted by Elliott Ng on May 13, 2008 at 1:36 pm

“James的案例使得我们注目的原因在于他的那条简单的短信――仅仅一个词，’被捕了’。同时，我们也为整件事情传播的速度而震惊，”Stone说“它体现出了无时不刻在你身边的实时交流网络的简单性和有价值性。”

iFire：很简单的一个问题，用户为什么要付钱？，P2P仍在朝更有科技含量的方向发展，那么多免费的资源 Andy：喜欢这首歌，支持歌手 iFire：中国这些用户为什么要付钱，支持歌手？开玩笑，中国人？ Andy：不是下载，而是很方便在先播放，等等，超女短信，这个很有说服力吧 iFire：呵呵，我觉得这都只是超女周边产品而已，核心在超女，不在其他的那些形式，所以我想我说的你没明白，你所说的所有例子，都在其核心成功的基础上，但在中国，目前就是核心出了问题，所以我觉得现在的市场已经坍塌了 Andy：上月，***的一个副总联系过我，说他们要做社区，利用社区销售更多采铃，增加网站黏性 iFire：从事音乐相关工作的人大与购买音乐产品的人，而从事音乐工作的人80%不购买音乐 Andy：你说目前盗版环境使你绝望 iFire：想做音乐社区的人很多很多，跟盗版没关系，是人群的根本问题，在中国，做个擦边球的色情网站都会比音乐社区有希望套钱，其实我并不想让我的观点影响你，只是，我真的认为你现在没有真正弄清楚你将要做些什么 Andy：当然，我不是急于要赚钱的，saying， track， video功能只是满足我个人需求，只是看好，觉得有很好的发展 iFire：我很直接，不想浪费时间，所以我觉得今天再谈彩铃模式的人已经被[抛在后面了 Andy：要做的就是社区啊，然后人气。流量，钱 iFire：社区那么多 Andy：哦，彩铃，在线itunes iFire：用户凭什么去？，中国在线音乐的收费前景我并不看好 Andy：网站有黏性，用户活跃，用户喜欢扎堆 iFire：中国的音乐行业正在面临死后重生，在它彻底死掉一次之前，做什么都是徒劳的，你的那些说法都是空话，黏合性从哪里来？，你的优势资源是什么？，你是拿到了超女的授权还是别的什么授权？，因为你现在谈论的大都是一些已存在的模式 Andy：优势？现在只觉得功能比较新颖 iFire：我不觉得，白手起家的2.0英雄们是要掌握更新的概念 Andy：你可以随时收藏、分享喜欢的音乐并与朋友分享。由于歌曲（Track）都是存放在互联网上的无数台公共服务器上的，所以你可以在家里、学校、公司、网吧等场所不受限制地在线听歌。 iFire：或是更尖端却易用的技术，你所说的这些在一年前就已经不新鲜了 Andy：这个太绝对了把，myspace最初也很简单的 iFire：简单不怕，关键在于创意新颖，我没感觉到维众有什么特别之处 Andy：技术不新鲜，创意不新鲜，只是更简单／实用 iFire：这个更字很关键，你觉得中国人是对更简单有兴趣还是更有名感兴趣？ Andy：现在需要技术之外的东西推动 iFire：崂山啤酒就比青岛啤酒更好喝，但为什么那么少的人喝？ Andy：名，所以请教您这样的专业人士 iFire：所谓的更简单更易用是不足以吸引用户的，Gtalk就更简单更易用，为什么用户那么少？，我是说真正使用Gtalk的人，这是知识结构造成的分流 Andy：因为google 更有气质，品牌 iFire：你好好想想这些问题 Andy：维众现在没有品牌，所以想培养气质，区别其他网站 iFire：靠什么培养？，维众的品味是由你来决定还是由用户？ Andy：网站引导 iFire：仔细想想，用户凭什么听任网站的引导？2.0不是网站引导时代 Andy：现在我觉得基本框架，产品定型了。myspace， digg前期是引导 iFire：那是因为他们起初都是做小众文化，而且那个时候小众没有类似更好的平台，如果myspace是兴起在podcast之后，那它一样死掉 Andy：podcast目前发展也不好啊，odeo的人都做twitter去了 iFire：我觉得现在中国人没有多少真正明白podcast的意义，只去关注那些平台的运营是没有意义的 Andy：不是，podcast用户学习，使用成本高 iFire：看来你没有明白podcast到底带来了什么 Andy：而且没有好的展示形式，声音不如文字／视频／图片表现力强，等等 iFire：podcast从一开始就支持视频，别忘了podcast本身是rss技术，不要把目光放在产品上 Andy：光rss就限制用户了 iFire：网络时代关注现成产品，是最大的错误，podcast技术只是网络传播手段的一页新的开始而已 iFire：网络独立音乐时代还没有真正到来呢

All three companies have used the personal brands of their founder’s effectively to launch, and all are leveraging social networks. (Side note: It is very interesting that Facebook and Twitter made the top 10 for all three.) Mahalo is also doing a great job getting their content featured on other sites, and Guy is doing a great job evangelizing Truemors at conferences. It will be interesting to see if Leah, Kevin, Guy and Jason can sustain their momentum over the coming months as the hype settles, and the product themselves become the real growth driver. It will most certainly be an interesting ride, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on their progress and tactics

一如 Clay Shirky 所說的，「今天每一個 URL 就是一個社群互動、團體行動的可能。」

一如我期待未來的群眾，從四面八方、從各種語言但是有自己生命軌跡的參與者，丟出他們平淡無奇的提問。正是因為你我軌跡如此不同，我們才能夠讓網路世界比充斥著文化社會資本的傳統世界窗口，還來得光鮮亮麗、生動有趣！

…以我為例，每天起床，打開火狐瀏覽器，先連上我工作的中時電子報，然後利用瀏覽器的分頁功能，一個分頁連上Bloglines，接收我訂閱的一七一個RSS，幾個分頁連上黑米、推推王等書籤網站，一個連上Twitter，然後再開一個分頁，前往其他新聞網站或部落格。一整天，我都在這些分頁間切換，跳躍閱讀，吸收的資訊量可能上千篇；當一天結束，我發現，我從書籤網站或部落格裡得到的資訊，往往比傳統媒體，尤其千篇一律的電視新聞裡更多，數十倍。或許你發現了，以往由少數報紙、三家電視台寡占的傳播模式，早已是歷史，當你以為七家新聞台、十幾家報紙已經是「資訊爆炸」，請試試網路如恆河沙的寧靜喧囂。