Twitter - What Will Dominate: Content Push or Content Pull?
By Steve Poland • March 28, 2007
I don’t know what will blow up and be used more on Twitter — content push plays, or pull plays. Push would be having ‘NFL’ as a friend and getting all the latest NFL news pushed to you as it happens. Pull would be service apps like users requesting stock quotes, sports scores, yellow page phone numbers, etc.
There’s monetization capabilities in either — I’m sure the twitters sent out to the users won’t use the full 140-character limit. Thus, you can add some ad text — “Brought to you by Pepsi”.
Right now, the “pull” apps are a bit clunky — until Twitter resolves usage of “direct messages” as not being in the following format “d [username] [message]”. I see a day when companies have built apps using Twitter and are telling users in their ads, “Text to 40404: @Starbucks [zip code], to get the closest Starbucks address and phone number!”
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12 Responses to “Twitter - What Will Dominate: Content Push or Content Pull?”
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I see the push apps being a lot more popular as they could be used on both the web and mobile fronts.
As far as pulls go - there is no reason to use them on the web side of things.
For example: if you are getting the weather, there are three groups of users:
1. You have your local forecast bookmarked and/or on a start page of some sort. If it’s bookmarked, congrats - you’re over 40.
2. You use Google to search for weather and go with the first result. You also are 15-17 years old and grew up in the age of Google/MySpace.
3. You’ve been using the Internet forever and you can name at least 15 weather domains off the top of your head. The fastest way for you to check the weather is to type at 120WPM the domain name, then slam ctrl+enter.
When it comes to Twitter - only the techies are using it currently, which means it’s group #3.
On the mobile side of things - I could see pulls work, but not for a long time honestly. It would take massive amounts of marketing on the business side to really make it worthwhile.
In all honesty, I see things like texting Starbucks for the closest locations as novelties. On a trip you see a Starbucks billboard that tells you text Starbucks to get the closest location - your wife on a bored whim does it, out of curiosity. If there’s on near bye you might swing through really quick, but you’ll forget the code to text to whatever that number is in 30 seconds and will never use it again.
I agree with Michael. I realize I sound like a broken record on these Twitter posts/comments, but I don’t get it.
Group messaging (push) is perhaps the biggest possibility. I think that the pull space has been done already and 99% of mobile users neither use nor care about it’s possibilities.
News pushing (particularly if photos or video could be implemented) has some interesting possibilities.
I don’t see Starbucks advertising the “40404″ short code on billboards and other marketing material. Starbucks would rather setup their own short code. I believe it costs less than $5k to set it up. I think Starbucks will only use twitter’s short code when twitter has a huge user base like myspace or youtube. They still may not use it as a default number, but can use it for certain promotions/contests.
A few quick thoughts:
1. I actually think ‘d starbucks 00000′ is less clunky than ‘@starbucks 00000′ (or =starbucks as you suggested in an earlier post). I don’t know about you, but on my cell phone, typing ‘d [space]’ is less keystrokes than an @ symbol. (And just as easy/easier on the web.)
2. Maybe I am just being contrarian, but I’m not totally sure why either push or pull will be all that popular once the initial euphoria dies down. Here’s why:
Push, well, that’s basically like an RSS feed, but with a character limit. Uh… I don’t see how that’s useful. (Except that it can be delivered to a phone, but phones are getting smarter, and will have full RSS and browsing capabilities before long, if they don’t already.)
Pull, that’s basically like an AIM bot (think SmarterChild), but again, with a silly character limit and less potential. I think AIM already works on most phones, so again, not seeing the advantage. Once the euphoria around Twitter wears off, I’m not sure why people would really buy into an inferior service (for these two things) than is already available.
I do think that push will be more popular but personally I’d rather request updates than have them pushed to me. This is one of the reasons that I am unlikely to ever sign up for Twitter. Of course rss feeds are an exception.
In terms of the “Pull” options… there’s already a lot of stuff available via google text messages, just seems that people would make more use of it.
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I see huge opportunities in “PUSH” from Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, etc. to twitt their presence at a club to the 50 paparazzi who now depend on greasing the wait-staff and bartenders at these H’wood spots. Cut out the middle-man and let the h’wood elite twitt their presence effortlessly and effectively to maximize PR benefit at Mr. Chow and Hyde.
marc,
I was actually thinking yesterday about Paris HIlton using Twitter to amp up her popularity even more. “I’m at Mr. Chow. It’s hot.” Boom - 3 hour wait for a table. “I’m ar Pure making out with everyone who asks.” Ding - $100 cover charge is no problem.
A really nice feature would be the ability to select which friends you’d like to receive updates from on your Mobile phone
“Pull” is for casual users and “Push” is for more serious ones. You need to setup an account (twitter or any other service), if you want the “Push” mechanism to work.
When you ask for some specific information, you expect what you will get back. But the push mechanism has an element of serendipity that will attract youngster. Twitter is compatible with both and hence has a great potential.
@ Colin:
Excellent collateral effect to my use-case. Why not have Paris get paid 2x!
p.s. re: celebs using twitter. Scoble has 1000+ friends … imagine what a “real celeb” could pull in!? LOL. as for monetization. I’m sure someone would pay Paris $$$$ to append to each twit… “drink pepsi. stay young.”