I never said that “you” shouldn’t use twitter. Not at all. I think there are plenty of people who should use twitter. I said I can’t use twitter. Different story. [...] Twitter is great for personal updates. It’s great for public customer updates. It’s great to see the live zeitgeist. It’s great to connect with a crowd at an event. And it’s fun. That’s why people should use it. I don’t think it’s a great way to make deep new friendships nor is it a great way to cold call or prospect for new business for most industries most of the time.

UPDATE: Midas Oracle is now on Twitter.

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[Below is my original post.]

His Twitter account… is a dead end.

I saw that John Delaney and Emile Servan-Schreiber (among a long series of prediction market people) have started to publish there. Why would those 2 professionals waste their time on Twitter instead of building their own blog? The question that kills is this one: If someone has failed miserably at building a popular blog, why is he/she thinking he/she can build a useful Twitter presence? I think that Seth Godin is right. For most of us, publishing on Twitter would be a waste of time. I would recommend Twitter only to some companies in some industries, for some specific situations. Don’t get me wrong: Twitter is an awesome, clever system. But we don’t have to invest in anything that is great. There are many great things in this world that I acknowledge but that I don’t practice. We don’t have time. We should be very selective. We should pinpoint where we are the best, and develop from that specific vortex.

Our role is to produce remarkable products and spread remarkable ideas. Once we have done just that, other people will Twitter about them —thank you very much. The majority of us should focus on building an Internet presence that Google (the world’s #1 media) loves to refer.

In this video interview, Seth Godin explains why he does not Twitter (9 minutes into):

Here is his awesome presentation at TED:

Here is his presentation at Google:

They scan.

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I’ve just read a Slate article that recaps Jakob Nielsen’s teachings —I highly recommend it to you.

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Same content —and same reliance to, what Jakob Nielsen calls, “marketese”. Triple alas.

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Emile Servan-Schreiber says smart things to journalists —but, unlike Adam Siegel, he is incapable of producing a readable website devoted to enterprise prediction markets.

A shame, for a former journalist.

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RELATED: WordPress plugin that quantifies readability.

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Deluxe Corp.

Flash + Usability @ Google Search

Jakob Nielsen (world’s #1 Internet usability expert)

• Flash: 99% Bad (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• In usability tests of 46 Flash applications, we identified several basic issues related to Web-based functionality’s ephemeral nature. (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 – #3 = Flash (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

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Previously: How BetFair screw up the “Next Mayor Of London” embeddable, enriched, compound chart widget —BIG TIME

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The most liquid of the Jason Ruspini-created contracts:

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I would like to talk a bit about the Internet marketing of these prediction markets, in the rest of this present post.

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As you all know, Jason Ruspini published a blog post on his (semi-abandoned) blog (spot the comments), was interviewed by Bloomberg, and then went to BNN (a Canadian business TV nobody would have ever heard about, otherwise).

In passing, I want to thank Fabian John of Tom Next (a German web forum on financial event derivative trading) for uploading the video to YouTube.

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Spot the referral stats at the bottom of the screen shot below:

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My Internet marketing thoughts:

1. The Club For Growth blog sent about 20% (22 clicks from CFG out of a total of 108) of all people who watched that video —even though the Club For Growth blog is much, much, much more popular than Midas Oracle (which drills a narrow vertical). This is consistent with what Jakob Nielsen has always said, namely that the Internet is in fact a collection of verticals. (See: Diversity is Power for Specialized Sites. “Small websites [like Midas Oracle] get less traffic than big ones, but they can still dominate their niches. For each question users ask, the Web delivers a different set of sites to provide the answers.”)
2. I think that the difference between the total viewership (277 views) and the referral numbers (108 clicks) is due to the fact that most Midas Oracle feed subscribers watched that Jason Ruspini video from within their feed reader (like Google Reader), and never had to “click” on the link to watch the video from within the YouTube page.
3. The above is a very interesting piece of Internet marketing wisdom, which prediction market firms (like InTrade-TradeSports, BetFair-TradeFair, Betdaq, NewsFutures, HSX, etc.) should mind —especially in light of the focus on prediction market journalism I talked you about yesterday

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Funny enough, John Delaney of InTrade stole the YouTube video (uploaded there by Fabian John of Tom Next), erased the mention of my (dirty) name (put up there by Fab who thought I would like this egotistic plug), and re-posted the video on the InTrade section at YouTube.

That Chris Masse-free copy of the Jason Ruspini video hasn’t attracted many eyeballs, as the stats show:

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If you wish, you may watch again the Jason Ruspini video from within your feed reader:

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Tax rate prediction markets – YouTube

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Related: Bloomberg

Previously: Tax Futures, “In Real Life” – by Jason Ruspini

The formula for website success is:

• B = V × C × L

Where:

• B = amount of business done by the site;
• V = unique visitors coming to the site;
• C = conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who become customers); (Note that the concept of conversion applies not only to e-commerce sites, but to any site where there is something you want users to do.)
• L = loyalty rate (the degree to which customers return to conduct repeat business).

Now he should enable this system on his little NewsFutures blog, where the current byline on posts (I’m sure) he penned is:

by newsfutures

Makes no sense at all to have anonymous postings on a blog that is aimed at legitimizing prediction markets in business circles. Anonymous texts have no weight on the Internet. People want to know who said what, and they want to be able to click on a link to check the post author’s background to see whether that guy/gal is legitimate.

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“No Author Biographies” = the #1 mistake —as seen by Jakob Nielsen (who needs no introduction to Mike Giberson )

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(Same remark for the BetFair blog and the InTrade bulletin. As for the Inkling Markets blog, “adam” does not make the trick. Full name, please. And do capitalize the first letters, please.)

HIGH-ROI vs. LOW-ROI INTERNET MARKETING

Marketing Sherpa has released the results of a survey of 3,186 Internet marketers, who were asked about their ROI from various marketing techniques. (Yes, it’s a survey, which is a bad way to get information about users and design, but this is about sales vs. expenses, not about use.)

Highest scoring was house email marketing, with 4 times as many respondents saying that they got strong or good ROI than people who said that it was a low-value tactic or hard to gauge.

Lowest scoring Internet tactic was banner advertising, with 3 as many people saying “low” (or “hard to gauge”) vs. respondents who said “good” (or “strong”).

Email is about 12 times higher rated than banner advertising for ROI. Allocate your budget accordingly: unless you spend many times more on your [e-mail] newsletters then on online advertising, you probably have ROI problems.

These numbers don’t surprise me, because our empirical observations of users’ actual behavior show strong positive effects of email newsletters and extremely strong banner blindness.

Still, it’s nice to see marketing managers come to the same conclusions as the user research, regarding what works on the Internet.

Email newsletters, user research findings:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html

Banner blindness, user research findings:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness.html

Marketing managers’ ROI experience, survey findings:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=30128