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January 2009

Twitter Feeling The Burn But Still Leading Micromedia

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I have been following along with the news that Twitter is seeking funding from VC people and have also looked at the idea of Twitter being offered up for sale. Paul Boutin in that piece at the Industry Standard talks a little about the numbers that Twitter is facing as its annual mortgage rate so to speak:

Twitter’s PR team hasn’t responded to my email, so I’m stuck with guesses. First, how many employees does Twitter have? Co-founder and creative director Biz Stone emailed to say there are currently 27. Using a West Coast average of $125,000 per year in salary, benefits and overhead for staff, that’s under $4 million per year for staff.

and further states:

Last year, the company’s blog claimed costs of $1,000 per user per year to send SMS messages to Europe — which is why Twitter stopped sending them. But there are no numbers for what its U.S. customers cost. To calculate that, we’d need to know the total number of tweets sent through the system in, say, a month, plus the per-message price that Twitter has (hopefully) negotiated with cellphone carriers. I can’t even find a good guess anywhere on either of those.

The numbers have never been provided to anyone and the folks at twitter are keeping the solid stuff under wraps. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall as they negotiate the numbers and showing their ideas and business plans to the people with their bank accounts but we may not get that privilege. Is their company really worth $250 Million? Many are questioning how that could be since they have shown no real idea on how they will make money. Others yet have said that they are clearly worth more than that including those people at Facebook that offered to purchase the company at a price tag of $500 Million. In spite of the arguments for and against, it is interesting given the current economic problems we face. We will keep track of the story as it unfolds.

MacWorld isn’t A Trade Show!

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Excuse me but I have to rant for a moment. First Robert Scoble posts that Apple pulling out of Mac World is a sign that Social Media is killing trade shows. Which was bad enough but in Robert’s defense he is a tech blogger not a trade show expert.  But then Expo Magazine posts this:

Why does a trade show have to have a grid of booth spaces? Why can’t a trade show also be a film festival?

Well because that’s what makes it a trade show. According to Websters:

: a large exposition to promote awareness and sales of especially new products within an industry <a computer trade show>
Now a trade show can be lots of other things as well including a film festival but having booths, or tables, or exhibits of some sort is what makes it a trade show by definition.
That point aside MacWorld isn’t a trade show, it’s a consumer show with a trade element to it. Which is exactly why the end of the article mentions this:
Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld is part of a larger corporate strategy de-emphasizing trade shows in favor of reaching customers directly through its retail outlets.
You see consumers visit retail stores to buy things. Wholesale distributors and retailers attend trade shows to select products to sell in their retail outlets. Most trade shows do not let consumers in (officially) they sneak in (in big numbers at events like NAMM, CES and the now defunct E3). Exhibitors at trade shows do not build their booths to see consumers, in fact they hate dealing with them because that is not their purpose for exhibiting.
/rant off

MacWorld isn't A Trade Show!

Author:

Excuse me but I have to rant for a moment. First Robert Scoble posts that Apple pulling out of Mac World is a sign that Social Media is killing trade shows. Which was bad enough but in Robert’s defense he is a tech blogger not a trade show expert.  But then Expo Magazine posts this:

Why does a trade show have to have a grid of booth spaces? Why can’t a trade show also be a film festival?

Well because that’s what makes it a trade show. According to Websters:

: a large exposition to promote awareness and sales of especially new products within an industry <a computer trade show>
Now a trade show can be lots of other things as well including a film festival but having booths, or tables, or exhibits of some sort is what makes it a trade show by definition.
That point aside MacWorld isn’t a trade show, it’s a consumer show with a trade element to it. Which is exactly why the end of the article mentions this:
Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld is part of a larger corporate strategy de-emphasizing trade shows in favor of reaching customers directly through its retail outlets.
You see consumers visit retail stores to buy things. Wholesale distributors and retailers attend trade shows to select products to sell in their retail outlets. Most trade shows do not let consumers in (officially) they sneak in (in big numbers at events like NAMM, CES and the now defunct E3). Exhibitors at trade shows do not build their booths to see consumers, in fact they hate dealing with them because that is not their purpose for exhibiting.
/rant off

Blog World Expo Headed To Blogwell

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BlogWell - How Big Companies Use Social Media - Chicago, IL - January 22nd

I’m headed on Thursday to Chicago to check out Gas Pedal’s Blogwell event. The event is described more fully on their site as:

Unprecedented insight on social media from Walmart, The Home Depot, Allstate, H&R Block, Mayo Clinic, Sharpie, Procter and Gamble, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Measuring ROI, managing teams, legal issues, B-to-B, working with agencies and creating great content. This is the best opportunity available for anyone looking to get started or improve their corporate social media efforts. Learn from the world’s top companies who are already doing it well. Get practical, how-to advice, a lesson on tricky disclosure issues, and loads of ideas and examples for just $200. From GasPedal and Blog Council.

I attended the first event held in San Jose last year and if the event in Chicago is anything like that, it will be well received by those attending. I am most interested in getting a chance to talk to some of the corporate social media type and find out what their plans are for 2009. We will be approaching many of the corporations out there for them to attend our event this year in Las Vegas in October. I hope that we can get some of these corporations to come out and talk to the rest of the blogosphere about what they are doing and to also find out what the blogosphere is doing themselves. I will try to get some posts up about some of those conversations and perhaps my flip camera will come in handy when talking to some of the attendees.

Are You A Gadget Blogger Headed to CES? Don’t Miss the Big Blogger Party!

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The Blogworld gang is headed to CES, and for the third year in a row we’ll be attending the “It won’t Stay in Vegas” blogger party hosted by our friends at the Parnassus Group and Platinum sponsor AMD.

As usual, they have an all star lineup of gadget and tech bloggers on the guest list, including Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, Andru Edwards, and hundreds of other tech bloggers.

Gary Vaynerchuk has picked out some great wine for the attendees,(view Gary’s keynote from BlogWorld 2008 here) and Sony is hosting a game lounge, with comfy seating and plenty of room for people to play all kinds of games on a single console, over a local LAN, or against the rest of the world on Sony¹s PlayStation Network (PSN).

Jim Turner and I hope to see you there!

The party is open to any bloggers who host a focused, editorially independent (non-vendor) blog and cover the tech or gadget space. You can request an invitation here:

Are You A Gadget Blogger Headed to CES? Don't Miss the Big Blogger Party!

Author:

The Blogworld gang is headed to CES, and for the third year in a row we’ll be attending the “It won’t Stay in Vegas” blogger party hosted by our friends at the Parnassus Group and Platinum sponsor AMD.

As usual, they have an all star lineup of gadget and tech bloggers on the guest list, including Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, Andru Edwards, and hundreds of other tech bloggers.

Gary Vaynerchuk has picked out some great wine for the attendees,(view Gary’s keynote from BlogWorld 2008 here) and Sony is hosting a game lounge, with comfy seating and plenty of room for people to play all kinds of games on a single console, over a local LAN, or against the rest of the world on Sony¹s PlayStation Network (PSN).

Jim Turner and I hope to see you there!

The party is open to any bloggers who host a focused, editorially independent (non-vendor) blog and cover the tech or gadget space. You can request an invitation here:

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