THIS POST WAS INITIALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 16, 2009
PRESENTATION CAN BE VIEWED AT THIS LINK
Recent upsurge in social media (some people
call it “social E-ruption”) cannot be ignored by business. A very good example
of what is going on is a simple fact: Googling the “business and social media” returns
231,000,000 results. This is a real ocean of information and of course an
average businessman is lost here. Moreover, when you start reading the most
prominent publications, like International Data Group CIO.com, Information
Week, PC World, Marketwire releases, and more specialized: Mashable , GigaOm and others – you will be overwhelmed with abundance of
information on zillions of social networks. However, one of the most intricate
issues in all media is – monetization – or how to get money from all this
activity. There are many good posts and news pieces that advise businesses on
WHAT and HOW, but as a matter of fact the essence of all advice is: keep and
develop contacts.
Nowadays almost everyone uses
social media, and the most striking example is President Obama. In the last few days we have read about success of Dell, and every day there is some news about successful use of Twitter
in job finding, medicine, etc. Consequently, upon reading a lot about
‘socializing’ I decided to go for a trial with one of the networks and see how
this can be used for business. In all my business tenures I have learned that
one of the most attractive business models lies in examining cross-industries,
finding and using the opportunities. As an example, a couple of years ago there
was (and I guess still is) an acute need for the lawyers that understand
international business models, investment banking and some specific industry
(e.g. telecommunications). So, basically, I consider myself to be in a position
where I may make some general type of judgments – with my background in
information research, telecommunications, investment banking and mining. I am
not affiliated (at this time) with any of social networks, so I am not biased
in my choices.
I was really impressed with the
news of Twitter, so I made my choice and started my trial on May 17 with this
network. The goal is – to ascertain – whether
Twitter, being a representative of social media, is capable of serving the
needs of business community, in my case – mining.
First of all, I found that majority of
businessmen know very little, if nothing, about Twitter. A very good
description is made in one of the recent
press-releases: “Twitter is an announcement system, where users post a
short message called a "tweet". The tweet can be a simple description
of what they are eating, where they are going, website links and photos. Users
"follow" other users on Twitter and receive a real-time stream of
announcements. As each user follows a new user, they can "tweet"
their new following, again creating a viral effect. Companies are using Twitter
to post news and announcements, using the medium to promote their marketing
messages. “
A concise definition is on Quantcast Web-site: “Twitter.com is a top 50 site that reaches
over 22 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a young adult, slightly
more female than male audience. The typical visitor reads Perez Hilton,
subscribes to Entertainment Weekly, and visits tennayalayouts.com. “
So, the question: would this service that ‘attracts a young adult’ have some
attraction for rough and experienced miners all over the world? Probably YES,
but let me explain what I have found.
First, and what surprised me, is the fact
that was recently made public: substantial inactivity of users. Only
10% of Twitter users generate 90% of Tweets, that means that the majority
prefer to watch and read. This was brilliantly illustrated by a couple of polls
that I have made. Of course, that means nothing, as compared to the total
number of users, but I guess, this is good representation of general trend.
This is related to PPT Presentation
Initial research shows that business use
(at least on the mining side) is very limited and is in its infancy. Big
business so far does not understand what is it and keep distant. Indeed, when
you try to search ‘mining’ with twefellow.com you get 230 returns, however,
most of them are associated with data mining; and only around 70 are real miners. I have made a simple
research and here are the results. On Page 2 I summarized the most active
miners-users; I have a list of members that relate themselves to providers of
‘mining news’ (only 12 of ALL Twitter users). And I have a shot summary for the
most prominent Twitter-miners. Note that on each profile page I have stats on
three top words used in their posts.
On Page 2 of presentation I have summarized
the most active mining companies and individuals as of June 15, 2009. What is
clear – that most of them started using Twitter a few months ago, and they are
not very active with postings. Interesting to note the trend that 5 of 12 of
the most active users represent global companies, mostly information providers.
Big market players are here: Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals, but they are
rather timid in activities.
Summarizing this initial research we may
point to the following:
Mining companies practically are not using
Twitter for any purpose
The most active are international
information providers
Twitter-miners do not use hashtags in the
right way – that means that information, provided by them is not segmented
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