Of Twitter, Exercise Bicycles and Retail Investors
Posted by
Beth Kurth on Wed, Feb 01, 2012 @ 12:59 PM
About 18 months ago I wrote an article questioning the use of Twitter for investor communications, “If a Bird Tweets in the Forest, Do the Trees Really Care?” The article made a distinction between social media and business communications, and cautioned readers not to confuse one with the other. But here it is 2012, and it’s time to revisit resolutions, drag out the exercise bicycle and reconsider the use of Twitter.
In particular, is the use of Twitter a necessary communications tool for publicly traded companies to reach individual investors? Just because I personally have not been successful maintaining a Twitter account, does that mean it’s not a valid communications resource for others? Maybe, maybe not.
Let’s look at the tape. Today’s news brings the revelation that celebrities are paid to tweet. More specifically, Snoop Dogg makes $8,000 or more per sponsored tweet, Paula Abdul makes $5000 per tweeted ad and even Whitney Port earns $2,500. While no one would expect to get their investment ideas from celebrities, the idea that Twitter conflates paid sponsorships with “earned” news makes Twitter a less legitimate resource.
Or the Wendi Deng contretemps earlier in January when Twitter mistakenly verified an imposter’s account as belonging to the real Mrs. Rupert Murdoch. I mean really, if Twitter can’t get that right, isn’t it a bit like the National Football League honoring little Bobby Brady instead of Tom? . One again, hard to argue in favor of a news site that can’t quite identify it’s own source material.
Alright – so some of content is really paid advertising, and some of the sources are not quite who they say they are. Is that really a reason to give up on such a highly hyped communications channel? This time we’ll leave it to the experts at Network World. Their take, Twitter Users: Most Tweets Are Garbage.
So there you have it. If you’re well into a Twitter strategy, congratulations! If not, go ahead and shelve the Twitter strategy for next year, and put the exercise bicycle back in the garage where it belongs.