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June 25th, 2009
Google Insights: Twitter + Iran
The mess surrounding the election in Iran seems to have refueled Twitter’s growth. This chart shows search trend data from Google Insights for the keywords “twitter” (in red) and “iran” (in blue). Twitter’s growth stalled in mid-April and actually dipped in May, but rebounded a couple weeks ago at the time of the Iranian election.
June 24th, 2009
Tumblr's Directory Is Broken
Of the 50 most recent posts from each of the top 25 blogs in the Music Directory, only 4% are actually audio posts. I checked. The Tumblr Directory is ranked by Tumblarity. Tumblarity encourages quantity over quality. The one possible benefit I saw from Tumblarity is that it could potentially provide a valuable way to surface sites in the directory, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The sites featured in nearly every category of the directory are there because they post an absurd amount of viral content like sensational photos, which boost their overall score. Few of them offer much value specific to the categories I’m interested in.
But I still like you, Tumblr.
Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn’t Age
“Brooke Greenberg (third from left) is the size of an infant, with the mental capacity of a toddler. She turned 16 in January.” Read more about Brooke at ABC News.
Twitter UK Downstream Traffic
Hitwise has an interesting report on Twitter based on users in the UK. Twitter usage is exploding in the UK much like it is in the US. This chart shows what type of links UK people click on from Twitter. More than half (56%) of UK Twitter traffic is sent to content-driven media sites including other social networking sites, blogs, news, and entertainment sites. Less than 10% of Twitter’s traffic is directed towards commercial travel, finance, and retail transactional sites. Google UK, by comparison, sends 31% of it’s traffic to highly monetized transactional sites. Interestingly, Facebook traffic is far more likely to end up on commercial sites than Twitter.
Most advertising dollars and online paid traffic revenue is concentrated in these more commercial categories, so this data doesn’t bode well for Twitter’s efforts to develop a business model as an independent company. More and more lately, I’m convinced that Twitter’s optimal business model is likely to resemble online communications tools like email and IM, which are loss leaders for big companies like Google and Yahoo!. Hotmail, Rocketmail / Yahoo! Mail, ICQ / AIM, and other Web 1.0 communications companies were crucial acquisitions for the big portals, but email and IM aren’t lucrative businesses on their own. I imagine, for example, that if Apple were to buy Twitter, integrate it with their other products, and provide some free, premium Twitter features only to iPhone and Mac users, that the revenue from incremental hardware sales would dwarf any revenue that Twitter will be able to generate on their own. I’m certain that Twitter and it’s investors will do well financially, but I’m skeptical that they’ll be able to do it as an independent company.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
June 23rd, 2009
Orbits, by the Henry Brant
In 1979, Henry Brant composed an eclectic work of music named “Orbits” for 80 trombones, soprano, and organ. On Sunday, it was performed live at the Guggenheim in NYC. Read the story at the NY Times. There are also several video clips on YouTube from people in the audience.
June 22nd, 2009
The Twitter Experiment
A professor at UT Dallas encourages her students to contribute to class discussion using Twitter updates, which are projected on a wall for the rest of the class to see. Not sure if this would improve the classroom experience or not (seems distracting to me and doesn’t push students to build a complete argument), but an interesting experiment.
Jordy Smith’s Landmark Rodeo Flip
Some are calling this the best surfing move ever.
June 21st, 2009
Sunday Morning, by Beck
