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Dell Makes $3 Million From Twitter Sales
Barence writes "Dell has admitted to raking in over $3 million from advertising its products on Twitter. The PC maker has been using Twitter for two years, and employs proprietary software to track sales from users clicking through from Twitter links. Of that $3 million, the company claims that $1 million was made in the past six months, following an explosion in Twitter's popularity. (Here is an analysis indicating that 72.5% of Twitter users joined in 2009.) The majority of sales have come through the @DellOutlet account, which posts six to ten special offers a week — with at least half of these being Twitter exclusives. Though the $3 million is a drop in the bucket given Dell's $12.3 billion in revenue during the first quarter of this year, it further bolsters Twitter's case for charging businesses."
As a software development company, we regularly use Twitter to see what people think of our software and try to improve it based on the feedback on Twitter. Twitter has also been a tremendous help in spreading our news announcements throughout the community. The business value is huge.
Each time I'm baffled by how Slashdotters totally miss the point of Twitter, and try to paint it off as a useless website with no substance. It isn't about whether blogs/mailing lists/email/etc are better communication tools.
So, what IS the point?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Despite all this talk of Twitter, I still haven't figured out what, if anything, Twitter actually is. The two main descriptions that keep recurring are:
A reimplementation of IRC over HTML and
A site where people talk about how great Twitter is, and occasionally panic over current events
Does that pretty much sum Twitter for non, uh, twits up?
I don't know if I agree. Twitter is kind of odd, its not like facebook or e-mail. It is as personal as a text message, yet as easily to ignore as a blog. It is also great to see not only what is going on in the world, but what people think about what is going on. This shows there is definitely value for twitter, and like you I agree they can't charge for commercial tweets, but I think there are many other options for them to make money (most likely through premium services, maybe allow longer posts at 5c an additional character, or more a more customizable profile for X dollars, or maybe customer leads based on their user data).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
oh please, oh please let them start charging..that'll end that stupid shit once and for all and I won't have to read
@somefuckingretard #mymomfucksgoats #yourmomshouldtoo
I've never used Twitter, and I've never had to read anything like that. I think perhaps you're doing something wrong.
That may have been 3 million in sales they wouldn't have had otherwise and setting up a twitter account is free so I don't see how it's a bad thing.
I only understood twitter properly a few days ago. I used to think of it as a blogging service, which it isn't. Its more like a web-based version of IRC.