My stats in 2008.And at present. 10X the number of folks followed = Signal to Noise problem.
Twitter’s lack of growth over the past few months has quickly become its defining narrative – witness Inside Twitter’s plan to fix itself from Quartz, which despite the headline, fails to actually explain anything about said plan.
We are all accustomed to the idea of software “Preferences” – that part of the program where you can personalize how a particular application looks, feels, and works. Nearly every application that matters to me on my computer – Word, Keynote, Garage Band, etc. – have preferences and settings.
On a Macintosh computer, for example, “System Preferences” is the control box of your most important interactions with the machine.
I use the System Preferences box at least five times a week, if not more.
This post marks the 10th edition of my annual predictions – it’s quite possibly the only thing I’ve consistently done for a decade in my life (besides this site, of course, which is going into its 12th year).
But gazing into 2014 has been the hardest of the bunch – and not because the industry is getting so complicated. I’ve been mulling these predictions for months, yet one overwhelming storm cloud has been obscuring my otherwise consistent forecasting abilities. The subject of this cloud has nothing – directly – to do with digital media, marketing, technology or platform ecosystems – the places where I focus much of my writing. But while the topic is orthogonal at best, it’s weighing heavily on me.
So what’s making it harder than usual to predict what might happen over the coming year? In a phrase, it’s global warming. I know, that’s not remotely the topic of this site, nor is it in any way a subject I can claim even a modicum of expertise. But as I bend to the work of a new year in our industry, I can’t help but wonder if our efforts to create a better world through technology are made rather small when compared to the environmental alarm bells going off around the globe.
It’s that time of year: The annual ritual of looking back and looking forward is in full voice. Long time readers know I always make predictions around the turn of the year, and I expect my 2014 prognostications will come sometime this weekend. Meanwhile, it’s time to take a look at what I wrote a year ago, and judge how well I did.
You may recall I took a different approach in 2013, and wrote predictions mainly for things I *hoped* would come true, rather than things I expected would. I’ve been doing these predictions for nine years now, and I guess I was looking for a fresh angle. All in all, things came out OK, but you be the judge. Here are my predictions, and my short summary on how they fared.
I’m going out on a limb, but a fairly stout one: Like Azeem, I think Apple bought Topsy for its search chops. But Azeem, who I admire greatly, says Topsy could become the search engine “for iOS… to index both the social Web, but also the best bits of the Web that power Siri and Apple Maps, [and] reduce the reliance on Google and reduce the flow of advertising dollars to the big G.” Certainly possible, but I don’t think Apple bought Topsy for its ability to search the web, or even for its trove of Twitter data. That might be a nice bonus, but I don’t think it’s the bogey.* Others have written that Topsy might be used to improve Apple’s iTunes/app search, but again, I think that’s not thinking big enough.
No, Apple most likely bought Topsy because Topsy has the infrastructure to address one of Apple’s biggest problems: the iOS interface. Let’s face it, iOS (and the app-based interface in general) is slowly becoming awful. It’s like the web before good search showed up. To move to the next level, Apple needs a way to improve how its customers interact with iOS. Topsy will help them get there. Also, I think Twitter is happy that Apple bought Topsy – but more on that later.
Last week there was a lot to say about Twitter and bitcoin, and the Guardian offered some reflections on what the NSA revelations mean to the average Joe. As always, if you want to keep up with what we’re reading/thinking about on a weekly basis, the best way is to subscribe to the “else” feed, either as an email newsletter or through RSS.
That Goddamned Blue Bird and Me: How Twitter Hijacked My Mind – New York Magazine
On the occasion of the IPO, a thorough contemplation of the ups and downs of writing and thinking with Twitter. “Collectively, the people I follow on Twitter — book nerds, science nerds, journalists, the uncategorizably interesting — come pretty close to my dream community.”
NSA Files: DECODED – The Guardian
The Guardian puts out a great multimedia package about what the NSA revelations mean to individuals, including descriptions about metadata and the real scale of a “three hops” network.
My three hops network is larger than the population of Australia.Read More
Twitter’s S-1 filing is now public, you can read it here. There’s no dearth of coverage, just Google News it. I’m interested in a few metrics compared to its most likely comparables, namely Google and Facebook. First, a couple tidbits from Twitter’s S-1:
* Top line growth y/y: 118%. Twitter shows financials up to Q2 2013, so through June. Growth 1H 2012 to 1H 2013 is our most recent comparison: $101.3mm in 1H ’12, to $221.4mm in 1H ’13. That’s impressive y/y topline growth of $120.1mm, or 118%.
* Implied 2013 topline: nearly $600mm, but possibly pushing $750mm. Twitter’s earned 62% of its 2012 revenue in the second half of the year. If it does the same this year, that would imply a topline revenue for 2013 of $582.4mm and a second half of around $361mm. Given Twitter took the option of filing its IPO under the JOBS Act, which allows for confidential filing for businesses under $750mm in annual revenue, one could argue that it filed because it knew it was going to have a blowout second half, which would push its FY topline over $750mm. If indeed revenues are accelerating beyond the norms set in 2012, we may see a second half revenue figure of closer to half a billion, which would be pretty spectacular.
(image) Last week I was in Salt Lake City for the Adobe Summit, on a stage the size of a parking lot. After some opening remarks about how the world is increasingly lit with data, I brought out Adam Bain, President of Global Revenue for Twitter. (He Vined it, natch.) Five thousand or so folks in the Internet marketing and media business were in attendance, behind us was a 7,000 square foot HD screen (I kid you not). I’ve been in front of a few big crowds, but this one was enormous. You could have parked a few 787s in the space.
My point is this: Bain knew he was in front of a lot of people, including nearly 200 journalists. As we worked our way through any number of predictable but important topics – Twitter’s revenue (growing but no numbers), the acquisition of BlueFin (TV analytics and more), etc. – I asked Bain to distinguish between Twitter and its competitive set. This was a relatively politic way of asking the inevitable “What about Facebook” question. It was then that Bain uttered what I thought was the most interesting comment of the day: “[With Twitter,] there’s no algorithm between you and your feed.”
(image)
We are all accustomed to the idea of software “Preferences” – that part of the program where you can personalize how a particular application looks, feels, and works. Nearly every application that matters to me on my computer – Word, Keynote, Garage Band, etc. – have preferences and settings.
This post marks the 10th edition of my annual predictions – it’s quite possibly the only thing I’ve consistently done for a decade in my life (besides this site, of course, which is going into its 12th year).
