Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Twitter Vs. Facebook - A Tale of Two IPO's

As someone that actually buys advertising from social media sites, the pricing of the Twitter IPO seems outright stupid. Let's compare the Facebook IPO to the Twitter IPO. Just prior to their IPO, Facebook had literally coined a way to print money. On the other hand, the impact of Twitter tweets is fading into little more than white noise.

Immediately prior to the Facebook IPO, we were re-allocating media spending out of print and into Facebook. The capability Facebook had created that both allowed and forced commercial enterprises to buy promoted posts, was a money printing machine. Facebook's promoted posts were the most cost efficient media buy I could find. And our firm was one of millions that increased their spending on Facebook due to the launch of promoted posts and better mobile advertising opportunities.

So how about Twitter. Frankly, at this point, I consider Twitter basically to be a time suck. Given that we have an active social media program, I have to monitor it, and occasionally post (in part, just to keep up with the competition). Twitter does not offer any compelling advertising opportunities yet. The ad positions available will either fall into the category of suffering from "banner blindness" or be rather ineffectual, as it's challenging to come up with a compelling ad given Twitter's character limits.

While my opinion is based on the results being achieved solely by our firm, given that our target audience is 18-49 year old females. this audience is a pretty good one for getting a handle on social media trends. Given that my most recent Twitter posts have had little more impact than if I had just gone outside and shouted into the wind, this seems like a pretty good indication that Tweets are declining in value. Since our fashion site has  over 3,600 Twitter followers, is it sort of shocking how few clicks my tweets yield. When reviewing web analytics, traffic from Twitter is basically inconsequential.

Want to do your own due diligence? Visit any commercial firm's Twitter posts. Check and see how few retweets they are getting. Then check out the Instagram site of a fashion firm or any company that has great proprietary photography and notice how many "likes" they are getting. Instagram is where the action is these days.

The Information on this blog is provided for education and informational purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. YOU SHOULD NOT MAKE ANY DECISION, FINANCIAL, INVESTMENTS, TRADING OR OTHERWISE, BASED ON ANY OF THE INFORMATION PRESENTED ON THIS BLOG WITHOUT UNDERTAKING INDEPENDENT DUE DILIGENCE AND CONSULTATION WITH A PROFESSIONAL BROKER OR COMPETENT FINANCIAL ADVISOR.