The Nature of Narrative in the Age of Networks

All A-Twitter About Geo

We’ve probably all seen a version of this announcement by Twitter.

This is a significant announcement, and further validation of the gigantic opportunity in cracking the nut of location-based social media and advertising.

Two notable paragraphs, IMHO:

The ramifications or opportunities between linking twitter and geo-location are many, and will surface over time. Location-based services are incredibly interesting, but the problem is, how do you find enough users in that two-mile radius to make it worth the effort? If Twitter decides to arrange its business model to aggregate tweet themes with location, then it could, in theory, send targeted ad messages to those whose tweets and geo-location fit the target to advertisers.

That last line is the key: how do you build networks that self-select a behavior, and then target users engaged in that behavior locally, or locally-aggregated-nationally (or internationally). That is, a social nichework, or the true definition of a behavioral network.

“For marketers, it boils down to finding the correct integration between marketing and technology. If someone demonstrates that sending Twitter messages improved click-through rates and sales, the company could charge for it, and you would see budgets move from banner ads to targeted Twitter feeds. Citing June stats from a Harvard Business school professor, Sheehan says, “that’s not likely — at least not now, because 10% of Twitter users account for more than 90% of tweets.”

Twitter’s user-context is “microblogging.” But few folks out there consider microblogging a passion or hobby (as stated, a tiny fraction of Twitter users account for the vast majority of tweets).

Quit thinking from a social-media-centric standpoint. Think about users in the context of the zillions of behaviors, hobbies or industries in which the already engage! Only then think about how to employ the myriad social media tools/utilities in the context of those behaviors, hobbies or industries. While a social media programmer may *use* Twitter for the microblogging function (or even the mapping function), integrated into your affinity-group-engaging app, the big advertising opportunity comes when you get folks aggregated doing common behavior, with location-based dependence, across large swathes of geography.

Social nicheworking is the integration of all (or some significant subset of) social media tools (e.g. IM, social networking, media sharing, micro-blogging, geo-tagging, mobility, etc.) built on a foundation of local—people, places, events– in the context of a specific affinity group. We can use platforms like Twitter (and many are), but should do so in a way that builds an asset, perhaps in partnership with the affinity-group specialist (e.g. media company).

As some are saying re: the iLike/MySpace deal– “own your own dirt” (or at least diversify your “leasing” of that dirt sufficiently so you’re not too dependent on one platform) or you’ll be subject to uncontrollable market forces in building your social media asset. That is, you’ll be intermediated and marginalized.

If you don’t want to be intermediated within social media by the likes of Facebook and Twitter (and you don’t have to), and you’re looking to build an online asset, or extend your existing business into social media in a way that you can tie a nice i-banker-friendly bow around your audience-engaging asset and sell it to a third-party (which is the business of media as a whole), then heed these words.