Twitter Redesign-In-Progress Offers Fresh Music Marketing Potential
Yeah, the extra photos and tagging that Twitter recently introduced are definite boons to music marketers. But they're not stopping there. Things are getting all crazy, Facebook-ish, "media forward" some people call it. Lots of new marketing potential emerging on Twitter but writers invoking Facebook helped me realize how Twitter, too, may already be curtailing organic reach.
Lastest Changes Focus On Your Twitter Profile
Yesterday Twitter announced a "whole new you, in your Twitter profile."
The most noticeable change to the example profiles of folks like Gilberto Gil, John Legend and Weezer is the addition of a large pic in addition to the smaller portrait/etc. pic that shows up by all your posts. This is the feature that's inspiring the Facebook comparisons.
Twitter also mentions something about the ability to "customize your header" without going into specifics but they do detail the new possibilities for featuring tweets:
Best Tweets: Tweets that have received more engagement will appear slightly larger, so your best content is easy to find.
Pinned Tweet: Pin one of your Tweets to the top of your page, so it’s easy for your followers to see what you’re all about.
Filtered Tweets: Now you can choose which timeline to view when checking out other profiles. Select from these options: Tweets, Tweets with photos/videos, or Tweets and replies.
As The Next Web points out, going much more deeply than did Twitter, clicking on the "photos and videos" link leads to a two-column display of tweets that include photos and videos. It's a nice browsing feature.
Adweek takes a look at these changes as part of a larger group of shifts at Twitter and Vine. These shifts include the addition of multiphotos and tagging to tweets as well as a wide range of new ad formats.
The current crop of changes are available now to new signups and will be rolling out over the next few weeks to those already on Twitter.
Will Twitter Follow Facebook and Throttle Organic Reach?
For now Twitter says they show you all the tweets of everyone you've followed. As long as that's the case, they're not truly throttling organic reach as does Facebook.
However, note that only some of the photos and videos you attach to your tweets are currently shown in your main Twitter feed. If you're looking at a profile, the new photos/videos option seems to return everything but the real issue will be how that's handled in your followers' feeds. If all paid posts' videos and pics are shown but only some of you or your followers' are visible, then that's a small step towards throttling organic reach.
Let me know what you see!
More:
- Twitter Adds Up To 4 Photos Per Tweet Plus Tags
- Twitter's New Music Strategy: Vevo Music Videos, Beats Music Ads, SoundCloud Partnership
- Twitter To Shutter #Music App April 18th
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) posts music crowdfunding news @CrowdfundingM. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
The pinned post is amazing! I always wanted something like this on Twitter. I don’t think they will throttle organic reach (yet), because Twitter advertising is not available in a lot of countries.