Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Twitter has become Grand Central Station for marketers




Twitter has attracted a lot of users and that’s drawn marketers like flies to dung.
Judging from the “followers” I’ve attracted with my modest Twitter postings, marketers are mining Twitter for eyeballs and possible customers.
The two big types of marketers I see are adult dating or sex services (which I recently wrote about) and companies promoting tools to market on Twitter. (I’ve also had followers pitching acne meds, makeup, and business software.)
Among the companies pitching me lately are Hummingbird, MyTweetFollowers, Magpie, TweetROI and Twitter Submitter.
Hummingbird promises to “bring you tens of thousands of followers” on Twitter and build business relationships with them. Hummingbird sells its marketing software program for $97. It says services like TwitterCounter.com and TweetTornado charge hundreds of dollars a week or month for the same thing.
MyTweetFollowers promises to grow your Twitter network and “gain a ton of followers.”
Magpie is a viral marketing and advertising tool for Twitter users.
TweetROI is for creating marketing campaigns on Twitter. Customers can get the word out about products, services, events and Web sites by paying for tweets from Twitter users. So those rave reviews you’re reading on Twitter might have been paid for.
Twitter Submitter has built a database of Twitter users to which it can market products and services. It sends information to Twitter users who have expressed an interest in such things as "investment opportunities," "how to retire early," "natural and organic foods" and "gambling and casino sites."
Searching around Twitter and the Web you can find dozens of similar services. Companies are leveraging Twitter’s open platform and providing tools to businesses that want to reach Twitter’s growing audience.
These companies are finding a way to make money with Twitter where Twitter itself has not.
News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch today threw cold water on media speculation that microblogging service Twitter might be a takeover target.
“Be careful of investing here,” he said of Twitter, according to Reuters.
Twitter would be a tough investment to justify because it hasn’t found a way to make money, Murdoch said.

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