Is Twitter the Next Wave of Advertising, or Mostly Swept in the Undertow?

If you're arriving from the e-marketing class blog, welcome and Antkeg Remi.

A study by the digital marketing agency 360i offers some surprising findings concerning Twitter and marketing applications. The essential finding is that there's a tacit wall between corporate Twitter accounts and everyday users of the social network.

Twitter, they conclude, is chiefly a medium for conversation unrelated to consumer habits. Brands, apart from Apple or Twitter itself, barely get any mention. The study notes that with the measure of anonymity offered by the Internet, conversations via Twitter tend to be more frank, and they find that 85% of tweets are original thoughts (that is, no re-tweeting.) Further, 94% of tweets ore personal rather than professional, and 92% of users keep their tweets visible to the public.

One big problem that companies who seek to use Twitter are going to find is that corporate Twitter accounts seldom, if at all, involve conversation with customers concerning a particular brand - about 1% by the study's findings. Corporate users of Twitter talk at consumers rather than with them, even though 43% of tweets are conversational on Twitter (that is, @ replies to another user.)

What does this mean for companies that hope to advertise through Twitter? It indicates that there is considerable room for expansion in the area of Twitter-based advertising. However, it seems to follow from the study that this kind of efforts are only effective as pull- rather than push-based advertising and requires considerable time and effort.