Twitter, Facebook or MySpace are the best known and in order to define them, it is essentiel to say that they are channels connecting a set of social entities such as: an individual or a company whose goals are different.
Notably "Facebook" created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, is now widely used by many people from different countries about 200 million active users in March 2008 only .This attraction is due to the fonctionalities provided by facebook such as:
Notably "Facebook" created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, is now widely used by many people from different countries about 200 million active users in March 2008 only .This attraction is due to the fonctionalities provided by facebook such as:
- Interacting with other users
- Sharing ideas, opinions and interests within groups or related forums
- Benefiting from the wealth of exchanged multimedia documents (video, audio, applications and games)
Companies also have their share, as professionals use "Facebook" as a means of promoting a product, brand awareness, introducing a slogan and keeping the image of a company.
It remains to ask an appropriate question: What is the relationship between social networks and the "E-commerce"? That is why we will talk specifically about "Twitter," the new phenomenon and the future of information dissemination tool.
History of Twitter
"Twitter" was created in San Francisco in the startup "Odeo Inc.. The initial idea was to provide an "sms" service that allows users to describe their news. Open to public on July 13, 2006, the first version was titled "stat.us" then "Twittr", referring to photo- sharing site Flickr and then "Twitter", its current name. In April 2007, an independent entity as created bearing the name Twitter, Inc.. Jack Dorsey at its head until October 2008 when Evan Williams would succeed him. The company had 29 employees in February 2009.
The main founders of "Twitter" are:
- Jack Dorsey dispatcher for a taxi company
- Noah Glass: former 911 dispatcher, centralized number of U.S. emergency
- Evan Williams: American blogger and also the co-creator of Blogger.com.
The three key people "Twitter"
Introduction and issues of Twitter
"Twitter is a micro-blogging service, which is different from traditional blogs where one does not need to invite readers to comment. This is a new principle of social networks. In fact "Twitter" is considered as the most informative and professional and social network. The reason for its creation is essentially linked to the importance of information in the third millennium. The dissemination of information has inspired, first, the creators to provide a level of speed (response time varies almost instantaneous from 0.001 to 0.002 per second). Second, work on information and accurate data has not been falsified. So how to create an environment that achieves a balance between speed and accuracy?
Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams were the first who attempted to answer this question by starting with an economic term that is quality. With "Twitter" they created a space for exchange and interaction; hence the vast amount of information passing through this space in real time. And to avoid most false messages, the developers separated the accounts and they added a small icon that means it is an official account or verified.
A single user, a celebrity or a business are all concerned with "Twitter" through the dissemination of news. A news information that is exchanged between subscribers.
Twitter and e-commerce two words that complement
I personally have been using "Twitter" for a year, and it allowed me to define it my own way. I can call it a medium of advertising which applies the principle of "give and take." It's a bit strange but this is not fake. The principle is simple, I have an account and you subscribe to my "tweets[i]" so I can show my news, my thoughts and especially my relationship with you and even for other customers where they can share their advertisements with me through a message. It is an exchange-art based on speed and represents a future tool to give and take whatever informational or advisory service.
The E-commerce "is the most mentioned by the creators. it is undeniable that the exchange has become all the more capable to meet the new needs of its users. As a result, they will launch a new strategy based on the payment. That is to say, the accounts of companies will soon pay profiles. Some people have criticized this, their argument is that "Twitter" will maintain its quality but it will on the other hand lose its free membership. However, conceiving the idea from a marketing perspective, the formalization of the company accounts will keep a level of trust and loyalty with customers. In economics, the principle of "no pain no gain" tends to be dominent, so one may proudly consider this as a step forward.
Statistics on Twitter
Techcrunch is a famous American blog specializing in news of Web 2.0 (via statistics Comscore), announced that "Twitter" has just passed the 32 million unique visitors in April 2009. The micro-blogging service comes just surpassed Digg.com[ii] (23 million visitors), Linkedin.com[iii] (16 million) and Ny.com[iv] (17.5 million). According to Techcrunch, the site could reach 100 million visitors per month by the end of 2010 if it keeps going. Meanwhile in the coming days to see the changes made to "Facebook", "Twitter" continues to grow (growth of 752% in 2008). And to conclude, it must be said that the rag business has changed from $ 400,000 in the third quarter to $ 4,000,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Evolution of awareness of "Twitter"
Membership "Twitter"
The ambitions of Twitter
The future aim of "Twitter» is to become a social layer across the web, the latter based on a thorough use of "tweets" as well as by Internet brands and services themselves ( robots, intelligent agents and information systems).
The leaders of "Twitter" have just launched a site for the media evangelism (Twitter Media), demonstrating that there is mutual interest between traditional media (TV, newspapers, radio ...) and microblogging service.
Even more interesting is the possibility to add annotations to tweets: "Twitter Reveals details" of new "Annotated Tweets feature. Contrary to what its name does or doesn't indicate, this technological development is related to a semanticization tweets. More specifically, it is possible to structure, complement and enrich the tweets to do much more than what the SMS can do: 10 Possible Uses of Twitter's New Annotations.
And finally they have also launched the "@ Anywhere" which injects some features of Twitter in any website. By adding a few lines of javascript in the source code we have the right to:
- An automatic recognition of "usernames" with the profile displayed at mouseover (Hovercards)
- Automatic Buttons Follow
- Tweet box so that visitors can tweet directly from the site
- Enrichment of authentication functions (Twitter Connect).
Problems and limitations of Twitter
After multiple incidents at "Twitter.com" and its platform for third party applications out of service, the company announced it had identified the reasons for failure and taken concrete measures to solve problems. More specifically, "Twitter" focused on errors in the planning, monitoring and configuration of its internal network. In response, the company stated that it had doubled its network capacity, increased surveillance and improved load balancing.
According to the site Pingdom[v], which has been assessing performance on the web since early June "Twitter" underwent 3 hours and 3 minutes of outage. This is already the worst in terms of downtime suffered by "Twitter" since October of last year.
The image of the whale means there is a problem in the server
On the other hand, many users have criticized all limitations imposed by the site. In my opinion, I can call it a limited freedom. It is true that this is not a race to collect as many subscribers as possible, but achieving a balance between subscriptions and subscribers within an enterprise may cause a loss of customers. The limits of accounts "Twitter" are as follows:
- Number of direct messages allowed per day: 250 (message identifiers to one of your followers)
- Number of requests per API (external programs): 150 per hour
- Updates statutes (tweets and retweets): 1000 per day. Additional restrictions are also proposed by the system at intervals of half an hour for example
Technical Limits of new followings:
- Number of new followings per day: 1000.
- When Twitter is taking at least 2000 other Twitter accounts, other limitations are imposed on the basis of such ratios associated with this account.
- Twitter implements other indicators and limitations, whose details are not disclosed.
A clear message: You must know your limits!
Finally, we can conclude that the true success is realized after a while. "Twitter" with its idea that combines two main tools of micro-blogging interaction and social networking has really deserved the term of "the new phenomenon. His surprising development two years after its creation, predicts a future of meeting the maximum needs.
