ZAPPOS $50,000 T-SHIRT

Zappos has a t-shirt in their online store for $50,000. Put one in my cart. See screen shot nearby [click for full size].

It's a bit beyond my current credit limit so I was unable to complete purchase to see if this for real. Probably part of the personality that makes Zappos culture so unique.

• Do they have personality like Rohit Bhargava discusses in his book *Personality not included?

• What are your thoughts on Zappos? 
  

TWITTER MONETIZATION

This post was going to be about a third party app that pays you to allow it to post ads in your stream. That app seems to be getting some negative feedback from followers of users already.

Lets explore how Twitter might do ads and make money.

What Twitter may do to monetize their network.

• All active users choose categories. The number a user would have to choose from is unknown.
• Lets say 3 categories of 20
• Twitter would sell ads on these user 'interests'

Possible choices are below. These are some I might choose if available ;)

• Running
  
• Golf
• Fishing
  

The advertisers that want to reach a receptive audience [me] would buy ads from Twitter to get in the stream of users who are interested in these categories.

Nike, New Balance or Zappos.com might buy ads to put tweets in your stream. Twitter would place these ads, mini billboards if you will, in the stream you follow. I am interested in running and if these firms have relevant messages I am willing to hear them out. There would be two links.

• One would take you to the information or offer

The other would

• Let your stream keep moving

Until you make a choice your stream stops flowing.
This way Twitter can serve highly relevant ads to users of the service. It should be relatively easy for the user to do this simple task [make a choice and click on a link or maybe an icon [Sort of like star and trashcan now].

Twitter may offer a way to opt out as well by allowing a user to pay a monthly fee to not see these ad tweets. For example the stream for @guykawasaki must move at a very high velocity since he is following 28,918 streams at the moment [9:36PM EST 11/19/08]. A user like Guy might just pay the fee to opt out. If one choose not to pay a fee, maybe there would be a set number of ads you would see a day... maybe 1-6 per hour as a maximum if your stream moves fast.

Twitter can do this. How users react will be interesting. People hate change. A recent survey [non scientific] found that many users would pay a monthly fee to use Twitter. Twitter can monetize their platform with subscription fees and/or ads. Perhaps there would even be a blended model offered as well. Smaller fee but still getting some ads from time to time.


How would you feel if Twitter created such a system? What say you?




PS: [yes I realize some people follow 0 streams. For those folks maybe they can only post so many times before they get one of the tweet ads]

TWITTER TOOLS & APPLICATIONS

Twitter is an online communication service.
Twitter is like nothing you have seen before. There are a few things Twitter is like...

• Instant Messaging
  
• Email
• Blog

...but mashed together with the best aspects of each.

There are some powerful tools to help one harness the immense power and bring it to the individual. [There are more then this. These are the ones that are most ofen used by Admore]

These are best utilized by placing them in the bookmark / Links bar in your browser. In order to save space on the bookmarks bar I use a folder named "Twitter". Most of the secondary tool are kept there.

LINKS AND TOOLS

Twitter The one and only!

Twitter Search formerly known as Summize. Awesome way to find tweets as Twitter updates are called. Check out the Advanced Search page for special operators.

Tweet Stats Used to see what a user commonly tweets about. You can do this for yourself as well as for others provided that their updates are not "protected" [locked out of the public stream] In the word cloud, you can now click on the term and see all the conversations that are related. There is more interesting data there as well. Check it out for yourself.

Tweet Scan Good secondary site for searching tweets.

Monitter & Tweet Grid These sites can track trends per key words the user chooses. Sports team work well on game day. Might be interesting to check stock ticker symbols as well. Never tried it, just thought of it.

Twitscoop A nice site to see what terms are trending per the number of updates users are posting.

Twitter Local Great way to find users near an area or zip code. Try a zip code and set the radius to 20 miles. Here is the one for my zip code, 48236. You will probably see my tweets in there somewhere. Look for Admore.

Twitterholic - The Top 100 Twitterholics based on Followers. Would suggest adding just a few of these folks to get started. Their updates may overhwhelm your stream if you add to many and they update alot.

There are a few services that shorten links to a size that works well for tweets. Two that are used frequently are TinyURL [25 characters] and Is.Gd [currently shortens to 17 characters]. There are others and you can search them out on Google.

A few people that you may enjoy following. These folks are in a folder called Peeps. This keeps a direct link to their full page handy.

• Guy Kawasaki Author and former Apple employee
  
• Laura Fitton AKA Pistachio She has taught me so much.
• Tara Hunt AKA missrogue Intriguing and interesting lady
• Tawny Press Vice President of Design and Development
• Zappos Tony the CEO of Zappos is very active on Twitter. He has written a guide for new users, "Beginner's Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter". Some of the features are currently disabled in Twitter [EG: Instant Messaging]. A great read for people who are thinking 'what is this Twitter, sounds dumb so far.' Read it at the link above.
  

Your comments are welcomed.

What are your thoughts on Twitter, favorite tools and apps?