The Rules Of Business Still Apply

Remember the dot-com days? When profits didn’t matter, and the new currency was ‘click-thrus’ and ‘page views’? The bubble was built by the general public’s fascination with this new thing, ‘the Internet’, and e-commerce companies along with their telecom counterparts (installing ever-greater capacity) rode the bubble toward a sudden and inevitable burst.

Social Media is beginning its shakeout. MySpace is struggling. YouTube is gaining traction as watching video online becomes a standard media, and Facebook is seeing continued growth, but much of it outside the U.S. as this market becomes saturated and curious Boomers drop off the site. LinkedIn integrates a number of useful applications and solidifies its position as a professional’s social media rolodex.

Now comes Twitter, off its highs of the CNN / Ashton battle for a million followers, a month after an Oprah mention, a curiousity to most and not yet monetized. Studies have indicated that most new visitors stop visiting after a month, and now a report that May’s growth on Twitter was anemic, although, importantly, the time spent on the site (by its active members) grew substantially.

So what’s next for Twitter? I’m not certain, but it is critical to recognize that Twitter’s celebrity users are essentially spokespeople and pitchmen for the site, not a business model in and of themselves. According to the rules of business where a company has an established and vocal ‘tribe’ of followers in its niche, the focus should be to provide value to its most loyal customers (visitors). This may mean perhaps, more integration with the hordes of third-party Twitter applications being developed, recognizing its role not as an interactive medium but a broadcast medium and provide services accordingly, and determine the best way to monetize the platform without alienating a customer base that is not used to be ‘pitched’ with advertising. It is then that Twitter can begin to expand and regain interest among businesses and individuals who will leverage the platform and applications using methods tested and proven by the early adopters.

‘The Oprah Effect’ will only get you to the lip of Geoffrey Moore’s chasm. The rules of business still apply as Twitter attempts to cross it.

Full disclosure: www.twitter.com/jimgardner