Yesterday Twitter announced a major overhaul of their platform. Here is what you need to know and the impact of the new changes on events.
I believe Twitter is event driven. I started saying this back in 2007, when not a lot of us event lovers were paying attention to this revolutionary social network.
Events shape the way Twitter works and users go to Twitter when they want to follow the unfolding of events, whether organic events such as the Arab revolution or planned events such as conferences.
News is that the California based company is going to change its platform dramatically in 2012. Apart from a major redesign, there are significant changes impacting businesses and events.
Let’s have a look.
The Hashtag Button
This is the biggest introduction that is going to have an impact on your event.
Twitter is introducing a whole new set of smart buttons. You can see them here.
I want to focus your attention on the “Tweet #Hashtag” Button.
Hashtags have become the standard way to categorize a tweet. If you are a social media savvy event professional, you will have set up a short and snappy hashtag to categorize all the tweets coming from attendees.
The new hashtag button allows you to tweet any item on a website with a preset hashtag on it.
AWESOME!
That means that you can attach the button to a video or schedule you have posted on your event website. Users will be able to click on the hashtag button and tweet from a pop-up with your event hashtag already in the text.
This is the most relevant change Twitter made that impacts events.
Brand Pages
Brands have the ability to customize their pages on Facebook and Google+ but they had no option to have their own space on Twitter. They now do.
On Facebook the biggest opportunity for event planers is to have a Facebook Page dedicated to their event. The same applies in this case.
There are already some examples circulating for major US brands.
The major benefit is the rich content integration. That means that you’ll be able to display videos and pictures for everyone that visits.
You will also have the ability to select a sticky-tweet that sits on top of all your tweets for new vistors of your profile. Read more here.
Self Serve Ads
This is the one that should capture the attention of event marketers. Clickz reported that the minimum spent to advertise on Twitter is US$15K.
Self serve platform hopefully will mean that the budget will be flexible as it is on Facebook and LinkedIn.
In Conclusion
There are a lot of other changes and you can learn more about them here. I believe that these changes make Twitter the social network to watch in 2012.
What do you think?
