Yup, that is a screenshot of our Twitter account you can see staring at you

The feature article in today’s Marketing, ‘Twitter enters the mainstream for brand communication‘ covers work we’ve done for three of our clients, with the obligatory introductory mention of Stephen Fry and his 130,000 followers, moving on to part of what we do for Skype:

Robin Grant, managing director of social media agency We Are Social, agrees that, if used wisely, Twitter can help reduce negative word-of-mouth online and assist with brand building. We Are Social client Skype, for instance, uses Twitter to ‘respond to people having issues with or asking questions about Skype’, according to Grant. ‘If we can respond, they tell their friends what brilliant customer service they’ve had from Skype.’

And then some of the work we’ve been doing with Ford:

Ford took more of a campaign approach to promote its latest Fiesta. It backed its ‘This is Now’ TV campaign with blog and Twitter activity encouraging consumers to submit photos and art and design-related discussion posts. Despite Ford’s Twitter activity, though, the car marque’s communications manager Lisa Brankin claims Twitter remains ‘niche in its appeal’. She adds: ‘By itself it is not strong enough but it can be valuable as part of a wider campaign.’

Twitter’s growth is heading in the right direction, but as We Are Social’s Grant argues: ‘Brands need to think carefully about what impact any commercial use of Twitter is likely to achieve before investing any significant resources in it.’

The cover story from Fiona Ramsay about Twitter’s plan to start charging brands (subsequently picked up by Techcrunch and others), starts from a quote straight from the horse’s mouth:

Co-founder Biz Stone told Marketing: ‘We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.’ He would not be drawn on the level of charges.

Stone said it could also create revenue-generating features to tap into the way brands use Twitter as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool.

But Bob Pearson, vice-president of communities and conversations at Dell, said: ‘If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.’ Robin Grant, managing director of social media agency We Are Social, said Twitter could charge for display ads or to access customer information for marketing.

I had quite a long philosophical conversation with Fiona about this when she was writing the article, and expressed my scepticism about Twitter charging for brands using Twitter normally (which is not entirely summed up with the quote she used, but it least got across the idea they’d look at charging for added value services rather than the standard free functionality). As I said in the comments of the article:

The challenge Twitter will face is that there’s such a grey line between personal and commercial use.

Aside from the celebrity issue, where they are clearly individuals, but using the service for commercial gain, it’s grey elsewhere too.

If I spend a lot of my time on Twitter talking about business related stuff, where does that leave me?

For brands overtly using Twitter, it’s not black and white either. Look at Ford’s Scott Monty for example (@ScottMonty), who uses his personal account to represent Ford. Even the account we run for Skype (@PeteratSkype) is as an individual not a brand (as is the same for most of Dell’s accounts). And of course Zappos famously have hundreds of employees on Twitter.

Let’s face it, one of the reasons that Twitter is popular is because it’s such an interesting mix of both your personal and your business life – in fact, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it lets you be the whole you. Twitter will be risking a lot if they try to change this.

Which has since proved to be correct, with Biz Stone publishing this clarification on the Twitter blog:

It’s great that both individuals and organizations are finding value in Twitter and there may be ways we can enrich the experience. In fact, we hope to begin iterating on revenue products this year.

However, it’s important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone – individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services.

Compared to the graph covering the 12 months up until January, that’s astounding growth (as that itself was just a few weeks ago):

To quote Hitwise’s Robin Goad:

Last week Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st, placing above online heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100), easyJet (101), Digital Spy (103) and Money Supermarket (105).

However, the service is likely even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers would be even higher.

Now of course, you might think this was down to the Stephen Fry effect, but we couldn’t possibly comment.*

What will be interesting if Twitter really does go mainstream (which until today, I can’t say I really thought was going to happen), is that, unlike Facebook, Twitter seems to exhibit the same sort of power law relationships as blogs do. Which means the bigger it gets, the more effective work we’ll be able to do for our clients through it…

*disclosure: Stephen is a client of ours and we helped get him going on Twitter.

Update: Drew Benvie on who all these new users are.

At We Are Social towers, we were rudely awakened on Thursday morning to a brewing Twitterstorm to deal with. Robert Scoble was Twittering to his 53k+ followers live from the Davos summit. Here are the edited highlights:

Scobleizer: @AnthonyHocken I hear Stephen Fry’s Twitter account isn’t done by him but rather is done by his PR firm. Lame if true.

Whatleydude: @Scobleizer I believe a PR firm helped @stephenfry set up his account (@wearesocial) …but us Brits can assure you, it *is* him.

Scobleizer: Getting lots of pushback on Stephen Fry from people who say he’s actually doing his own Tweets.

RobinGrant: @Scobleizer @wearesocial helped @stephenfry get set-up and gave him initial advice, but his tweets are all his own – see http://is.gd/hfNI

mbites: @Scobleizer yeah @stephenfry is the real deal

wearesocial: @Scobleizer @stephenfry is doing his own Tweets! We helped get him set-up and gave him initial advice, that’s all. Could you please RT?

Scobleizer: RT: @wearesocial @stephenfry is doing his own Tweets! We helped get him set-up and gave him initial advice, that’s all.

Scobleizer: @wearesocial glad to help clear that up. A PR company exec told me it was done by PR. I love Twitter took minutes to clear up incorrect info

vendorprisey: @scobleizer Surely the next tweet should read, sorry @stephenfry ?

Scobleizer: RT @vendorprisey: @scobleizer Surely the next tweet should read, sorry @stephenfry ? (My answer: yes. I’m sorry).

This may seem like a Twitterstorm in a teacup, but the threat to Stephen’s reputation (and ours) was real. It was essential that we acted fast to establish the truth before it spiralled out of control (in the end we were able to nip it in the bud within an hour). In fact, it was a microcosm of how we pre-empt and deal with situations like this on behalf of any of our clients:

1. Make sure you’re already respected members of relevant communities and have built strong friendships in them before any crisis erupts.
2. Listen carefully to the conversations relevant to your brand at all times
3. When appropriate, respond quickly in an open, honest and human way

Those friends mentioned in point 1 are the ones who are likely to come to your aid when it matters, just as ours did above – remember that their voices may carry more weight than your own, especially in these cynical times.

This is an approach that works for clients large and small, both in everyday conversations about their brands anywhere in social media and when confronted with much bigger crises than the one above. It was battle tested during Skype’s China crisis last year and passed with flying colours.

If you’d like to know more about how we helped Skype handle that situation or our how we help brands with online reputation management, conversation response, corporate blogs or advocacy programmes, then don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Stephen Fry, who in his Twitter bio describes himself as a dancer, couturier, superheavyweight boxer, neo-plasticist and rapper is a constant source of wry amusement. Recommended, if we don’t say so ourselves (disclosure: Stephen is a client of ours and we helped get him going on Twitter).

We’re being sneaky and embedding the original video from the BBC website. They might break it. Don’t blame us.

Update: Stephen Fry spoke to BBC Radio 4′s Analysis programme about Twitter, the web and other geekery (via).

Following on from our recent compendium of social media traffic growth, Robin Goad has posted Hitwise’s latest stats about Twitter’s phenomenal growth in the UK:

Twitter was one of the fastest growing websites in the UK last year, and it shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, the service is even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party were included, the numbers would be even higher. Many people seem to find Twitter addictive: the average amount of time that people spend on Twitter.com has more than trebled from less than 10 minutes a year ago to half an hour now.

Twitter receives the largest amount of its traffic from the USA, but its penetration is greater in the UK market. For the week ending 17/10/09 twitter.com ranked as the 291st most visited website in the UK, accounting for 0.024% of all Internet visits; while in the USA it ranked 350th, picking up 0.020% of all Internet visits.

Twitter is still most popular with younger users in urban areas, but its appeal is broadening as it grows. The fastest growing age group of users is 35-44 year olds, who now account for 17.3% of UK visitors to twitter.com.

Twitter is becoming an important source of Internet traffic for many sites, and the amount of traffic it sends to other websites has increased 30-fold over the last 12 months.

This follows on from yesterday’s US Hitwise data from Heather Dougherty, pointing out that Twitter is now more popular than Digg.com:

We’ve been experimenting using Twitter as part of our campaigns for a while now, and also helped Stephen Fry get going on Twitter, but although these figures are heading in the right direction, Twitter is still far from mainstream and you need to think carefully about what impact any commercial use of Twitter is likely to achieve before investing any significant resources in it.

While we’re on the subject, you could find out why people use Twitter, see Chris’ commentary on why the British tabloids are so hostile towards Twitter or even follow me on Twitter.

Update: also see Twitter: was there a Ross / Fry effect? and more recently, Twitter’s UK traffic trebles in a month.

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.

The Daily Mail’s reportage on Twitter has attracted the ire of the UK’s social media community – after a dismissive report on celebrity Twitter usage at the weekend, followed by reporting with relish about the Twitter backend hack a few days later. The result has been a mini online backlash against the Mail, including a spoof @Notdailymail_uk Twitter feed (contrary to rumour, I am not behind it), which has nearly five times as many followers as the real thing, and a spike in traffic to my own spoof Daily Mail headline generator as well.

Simon Perry points out at least one of the reasons the mainstream media can be hostile to services like Twitter – it allows celebrities to communicate directly to the public. With our help, Stephen Fry was one of the first celebrities to use Twitter and his phenomenal popularity has led a slew of British celebrities to follow suit, including Jonathan Ross, who’s making the most of his time off work by becoming Twitter’s self-proclaimed “Number One Twitter Detective”, tracking down fake profiles on his fans’ behalf.

Celebrities no longer need the intermediary of celeb magazines and gossip columns, and the Mail is among those newspapers who rely heavily on such content. Hence the hostility to Twitter. Twitter either has reached or is about to reach (a matter of recent debate between Vikki Chowney and myself) its tipping point in the UK. Just like other forms of social media in the past – such as blogs, Facebook or Wikipedia – the mainstream media are now moving on from treating it as a distraction to treating it as a threat. With outright hostility now the flavour of the day, are we beginning to see the endgame being played out? People are more likely to use online rather than newspapers in the UK and now even in the US for their news, and with the double whammy of newspaper sales declining and a recession reducing ad revenues, expect them to put up a fight to the bitter end.

Update: More in a similar vein from Matt Rhodes.

Update 2: From our very own Stephen Fry:

I’m not someone with press offices and all that kind of thing, but those like me in the public eye who have, have discovered it’s a magnificent way of cutting out the press.

If people want to announce their new this or their new that, they’re going “I’m not going to do an interview, I’m not going to sit in the Dorchester for seven days having one interviewer after another come to me, I’m just going to Tweet it, and point them to my website and forget the press”.

And the press are already struggling enough – God knows they’ve already lost their grip on news to some extent. If they lose their grip on comment and gossip and being a free PR machine as well, they’re really in trouble.

So naturally they’re simultaneously obsessed because they use it (as it fills up their column inches) but they’re also very against it.

So you’ll get an increasing number of commentators going “Aren’t you just fed up with Twitter? Oh, if Stephen Fry tells me what he’s having for breakfast one more time, I think I’ll vomit.”

They really will have a big go at it because it attacks them, it cuts them out.

An almost unbelievable couple of graphs from Robin Goad at Hitwise, the first showing that 10.09% of all UK internet visits last week were to ‘Social Networking and Forums’.

And the second showing Facebook’s inexorable growth.

There’s some more in depth data available in Hitwise’s UK Social Networking Update from July this year, and it’s worth remembering these sort of growth curves apply across social media, with this graph showing a similarly stratospheric rise in UK blog traffic.

As Robin Goad said at the time:

over the last 3 years UK Internet traffic to out Blogs and Personal Websites category has increased by 208%, compared to 70% for News and Media. Another interesting fact is that the market share of blogs is greater in the UK than the USA: 1.09% and 0.73% respectively in May.

The trend also seems to apply even to Twitter

Again, a nice quote from Robin Goad:

UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America. Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it’s getting there.

I’d also point out that the Twitter data above pre-dates the Stephen Fry effect (disclosure: Stephen is a client of ours and we helped get him going on Twitter).

Roll on 2009…

Update 21st Jan ’09 – The latest UK Twitter stats.