SXSW Notes I: The Power of the Stream

March 19, 2009
by Alex Hoye

• Twitter overtakes UK newspapers for traffic: Hitwise data shows that last week Twitter received more traffic than the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Times, the Sun… and so on.

• Twitter feeds UK newspapers: What taketh away also giveth – 9.6% of traffic from Twitter goes to those same newspapers – how people find news is changing forever

• It’s not just the kids: Neilsen Online shows that not only is Twitter growing at a nosebleed-inspiring 1,342% YoY, but also that the greatest growth in Facebook is in the 35-49 year-old demographic; And according to a Twitter employee, the average tweeter is 31 years old

• And they buy: And now the part that matters to corporates and businesses of all flavours. People are beginning to change how they go through the awareness and selection process for buying. Increasingly, people are buying based upon the recommendations of people or companies they follow in the stream – or they ask questions to the virtual crowd. I spoke to an executive for a major company who confided that he is making £250 a week on affiliate links to music recommendations that he tweets

• UK adopts early: Chris Sacca (@sacca), who is a Twitter investor, informed me at SXSW that London is Twitter’s number one city for users in the world

• Facebook Gets It: I had some good conversations with Dave Morin (@davemorin) of Facebook who used SXSW to add Iphone FB Connect to the recent complete revision. FB deals with streaming. FB’s stream strategy is much more media rich than Twitter’s opensource approach. David Sacks, who founded Yammer (@davidsacks), got some laughs in one panel for saying that it’s impressive that a company as big as Facebook was able to blatently copy what works in Twitter. What’s really funny is as he and I discussed at dinner that night, he didn’t mean it as a joke. It is both impressive and a sign of intelligent product development. And Facebook’s 175 million active users and 7.5x size advantage to Twitter makes it practically a trusted old friend at five years of age. A friend who will use its position and resources to harness the stream for value.

So, welcome to an exhilarating world where not only do we need to consider how to work with search engine paid search, organic search, display, affiliates and improved conversions on the page. Now firms must consider how to get the most out of the many-to-many torrent of information that is the stream. And it’s a stream that moves both ways at the same time.