Welcome to Twitter...Hey! Come back!

by M.M. McDermott

Twitter skeptics have a fresh round of ammo to snap into the chamber. Recent news says Twitter's retention rates are in the toilet. If you go weak in the knees for stats and visual aids, here's the Nielson article. Or just look at the sweet chart we liberated from them:


Raw data suggests that 60% of new Twitter users never come back after their first month. Now before you commit Twari Kari (See what I did there? I'm adorable.) consider that there's a pretty good chance those percentages are off. Many Twitter users utilize third party apps like Tweetdeck and Twhirl to carry on their Twitter conversations; Nielson's data doesn't factor in third party app usage. It can only measure those using Twitter's homepage to post. Just taking a look at my twitterstream, I can see that up to 50% of the people I follow tweet using something other than "web". That's a big frickin' blip in the data.

Regardless, I can see why turnover would be high. The Twitter experience depends on relationships and conversations to survive. Otherwise, you're just screaming announcements into the ether like the crack-addled homeless guy in front of the discount store near our house.

One thing social nets like Facebook do well is allow you to quickly build a circle of friends on their site through friend suggestions, contact searches, group and interest queries, etc. With Twitter, it's not that easy. Twitter's people-search function isn't that intuitive. And more refined search functions are only available on third party sites and online directories, not Twitter's homepage.

Everything's fragmented. And fragmentation can be scary for people. Especially when they're new, all alone, staring down at a profile screen with zero followers. You start to feel a bit pathetic. As a rule of thumb, sites that make people feel like losers generally don't track well in the return visit department.

But I've put together a quick Honey-Do list of suggestions for Twitter to boost retention. They're no doubt already considering stuff like this, but I'll throw it out there anyway. After all, it's not brain surgery. Brain surgery's way grosser.

• Boost people-search functionality on Twitter's main page. Include query elements you'd find on sites like Twellow. If that's too much back-end work, at least pick a few trusted third party Twitter search and directory sites and include links to them on Twitter's people-search page. That way, no one has to go off the reservation looking for friends.
  
• Create a regional welcome wagon. Kind of like the neighbors who show up at your front door with pie when you move into the neighborhood. Appoint local Twitterers to reach out to new members, engage them in conversation, suggest friends in the region, etc. If Twitter ever launches a paid Twitter-Pro style account, give the welcome wagon group free accounts. It could be all the incentive they need to help in new user retention efforts.
  
• Provide a more detailed How-To list for new users to follow when they sign up. This will help take the guess work out of establishing the account and building a network. I think LinkedIn does a pretty good job turning their How-To list into a challenge of sorts - a Percentage of Completion bar like you see at a fund raising event. The more you do on LinkedIn (add connections, make recommendations, fill out profile info) the closer you get to that goal. At the end of the day, everyone likes to feel they've accomplished something.
  
• And to piggyback off the previous point, try what 12seconds.tv does. The mini-vlog site awards "badges" to folks who hit milestones: join the site, you get a badge; post a certain number of videos, you get a badge; participate in one of their promotions, you get a badge. Why not give Twitter badges to users for display in profiles. Give badges to those who reach a certain number of posts, followers, and retweets. If you don't think badges work, then perhaps you've never heard of The Boy Scouts of America.

Even if Twitter never enacts any of these, take heart lonely tweeples. You'll always have me.

Unless you're lame. I don't follow lame-oes.

Other tales of Twitter worship here.

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Pepsi: The Official Soft Drink of…Master Chief?

We're surrounded by advertising every day. As Jason pointed out, some of us are brushing our teeth with the magical saliva of Mary Kate and Ashely Olsen after eating a hefty serving of super-digestible Spider-Man cereal. (If you are raising your eyebrow in confusion right now, read Jason Bloom's blog below.)

We see commercials during TV shows, advertisements before movies, billboards on highways, and banners during the games. And now, we're starting to see the footprint of advertisers in video games more than ever before.

Though my infrequent play as of late makes me a slacker in the XBOX 360 community and my XBOX Live Gamer Score is definitely cringe-worthy (don't worry, I'll save the details for a geekier blog on a different site), I am still a video game fan. So, when I happened upon a link to an article titled Video Game Advertising: Closing In on a Billion Bucks, you're darn right I clicked on it.

According to the article in the E-Commerce Times, in-game advertising in 2006 was a mere $77.7 million (okay, I know a just used the word 'mere' in front of a pretty hefty sum, but compared to $1 billion it's like loose change in the sofa cushions). So, why is the Yankee Group predicting a sharp increase to almost a billion dollars by next decade?

Simple: because video games are where the eyeballs are. More in-depth games and online game play can easily mean hours upon hours of game-play. I personally know some people who have basically made gaming a mandatory part of their daily schedule. Go to work; pay the electric bill; birthday dinner for sister; defeat 1,000 zombies barehanded in Dead Rising.

It makes sense that more and more advertisers are exploring in-game advertising. And, it makes sense for developers too, as they face the rising costs of creating more advanced game play on more complex platforms. So, how do gamers feel about this growing corporate invasion into their beloved games?

I asked my friend Adam Gallia, a frequent player, what he thought of the issue. His response:

"It doesn't bother me that it's in the game, unless it gets to be gratuitous and overwhelms the game-play experience. It could even make a game feel more realistic. But let's face facts: a good game will sell and offset the costs of development. A crappy game will not. So, make a good product and recouping development cost is not a problem. Seriously, do you hear Bungie (makers of Halo) complaining about development costs? The answer is no. You wanna put a Coke machine in the scenery of Gears of War 2? Go for it! But when Marcus Fenix is running around in Nike shoes with a Stihl chainsaw, I'm officially done with video games."

The key is subtlety. Add elements that make sense to the game without being overbearing. Trust me, what seems like a small addition to the game environment will be noticed, and will earn respect from most players. If you're company is cool enough to support Call of Duty or Madden NFL, then you've gotta be good.

Want to be more obvious and still be respected? Then offer something that adds value to the game-play experience. Online gaming offers opportunities to sponsor new levels of game play, new characters, etc. Hey, you're sponsoring the development of new downloadable maps for Halo 3? Now you're really cool. Check out this guest column from Double Fusion CEO Jonathan Epstein for some more insight.

Developers are beginning to integrate ad technology into their design process. Nielson is looking to track video game use to give more validity to video games as an advertising medium. As advertising in video game grows, this player can only hope that companies and developers know where to draw the line.

--Alicia Taft, Course Developer

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