Category Archives: Social software

Can Twitter help Apple’s shares rise?

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How’s this for a quick example of the power of Twitter I posted on ICAEW’s IT Counts today as my final day in the role of ION community manager, based on the simple premise of the value of being in the right place at the right time? The price of Apple shares have dipped recently with rumours of Steve Jobs’ health concerns. Yet yesterday notable blogger Robert Scoble posted: “I’m in Palo Alto. Just had yogurt at shop that Steve Jobs eats at frequently. They said he was in a couple of days ago and is in great health.”

In return Ross Mayfield posted on Twitter: “Amazed at how much play @scobleizer got with his Steve Jobs health insight.Wonder if it will move $AAPL stock tomorrow http://bit.ly/jLpI”

So now I’m watching Apple stocks today to see if there’s a positive effect effect. Whatever the outcome, it’s a great example of how Twitter can quickly and easily spread the word.

Note: the use of the $ sign before Apple’s stock symbol is so the post also gets published on the Twitter-related shares site StockTwits.com with other Apple posts.

Is the Long Tail dead?

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Hmm, seems like I missed the news last month that the so-called Long Tail is dead, which is interesting as I looked at the economics of music sales last month following a meeting with Russell Hart of Entertainment Media Research. Appears their Digital Music Report 2008, based on 1,500-strong survey, may support this trend in so far as it highlighted a drop in illegal downloads too. Or to put it another way I wonder if you included illegal downloads in the of the digital inventory whether the pattern might look somewhat different. Obviously you’re not talking about revenue then, but hey I’m just curious in case that helps find new sources of revenue!

“The most comprehensive empirical study of digital music sales ever conducted has some bad news for Californian technology utopians. Since 2004, WiReD magazine editor Chris Anderson has been hawking his “Long Tail” proposition around the world: blockbusters will matter less, and businesses will “sell less of more”. The graph has become iconic – a kind of ‘Hockey Stick’ for Web 2.0 – with the author applying his message to many different business sectors. Alas, following the WiReD Way of Business as a matter of faith could be catastrophic for your business and investment decisions.

“Examining tens of millions of transactions from a large digital music provider, economist Will Page with Mblox founder Andrew Bud and Page’s colleague Gary Eggleton, looked to see how large and valuable the “Tail” of digital music may be. They produced a spreadsheet with 1.5 million rows – so large, in fact, that it required a special upgrade to their Excel software (and more RAM) – and the three revealed their work at the Telco 2.0 conference this week.

“They discovered that instead of following a Pareto or “power law” curve, as Anderson suggested, digital song sales follow a classic Log Normal distribution. 80 per cent of the digital inventory sold no copies at all – and the ‘head’ was far more concentrated than the economists expected.

“Is the ‘future of business’ really selling more of less?” asks Page. “Absolutely not. If you had Top of the Pops now, you’d feature the Top 14, not Top 40.”