A collaborative paper about Twitter, with researchers from several companies taking part and trying to answer the question whether or not Twitter will change the way that market researchers communicate with each other.
1. Will Twitter change the way that market researchers communicate? Amber Coulter – The Research Agency Angela Gao – Survey Sampling International Bill Zuo – Survey Sampling International Daniel Alexander-Head – Colmar Brunton Julia Bode – The Research Agency Prashant Hari – Colmar Brunton Ray Poynter – The Future Place Shizue Vieira – Fem Marketinghouse Sue York – The Future Place
20. 3 Questions #qstn1 Which country would you most like to visit in 2011? #qstn2 What is your favourite drink? #qstn3 How would you define market research in 140 characters?
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23. Interaction Time! Live Feedback #Raypoynter doing a good job educating us about how to use twitter for research #esoa 7:17 PM Apr 26th via UberTwitter At ESOMAR APAC listening to a session on Twitter in MR by @Raypoynter #esoa 7:29 PM Apr 26th via web @RayPoynter Thanks Ray! Just trying to get an idea of what it's like for those physically there... #esoa #ESOMAR #MR 6:13 PM Apr 26th via TweetDeck in reply to RayPoynter
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Notas do Editor
Ray Good morning, from Angela, from Shizue, and from several of our colleagues scattered around the globe.
The three who presented at APAC.
First we are going to provide 180 seconds of background to Twitter Then we will contrast China and Japan with the global picture Next we will report on what Twitter has so far shared and discovered about this conference Finally we will throw the session open to the room and to people tweeting from around the world.
This is the result of running Search.Twitter, and asking for all tweets within 15 miles of Kuala Lumpur, in English
Twitter was only launched in 2006, it is still young – ish Alexa ranking 18 April, top 12= google.com, facebook.com, youtube.com, yahoo.com, live.com (Microsoft search), wikipedia.com, blogger.com, baidhu, msn.com, qq.com, Twitter, yahoo.co.jp All posts in Twitter have to be less than 140 characters long, and can be sent in from a range of devices including the Internet and SMS. Key terms you need to know are: Hashtags, are ways of grouping Tweets together, all esomar stuff uses #ESOMAR, this conference also used #esoa Tweetup, a meeting organised by Twitter Twitter Wall, a constant feed to Twitter, showing people’s Tweets, we will have one on the screen shortly Backchannel, alternative to conventional media. During a TV program people are talking about it on Twitter, creating a backchannel. When you follow somebody you see what they Tweet, but they do not have to become a follower of you, they can only see you if they do become a follower.
Twitter is not available in China. However, a handful of home-grown micro-blogging sites emerged in China. The first micro-blogging site was launched on May 2007 called “Fanfou”( It means “did you eat” in Chinese like the greeting “how are you” in western countries); QQ launched its “Taotao” micro-blogging site on August 2007 (Tao tao means “keep talking” in Chinese). These two are pioneers of China’s micro-blogging. Micro-blogging was flourishing in 2009, for example “Digu” (means whispering in Chinese) and Sina “Weibo” (means micro-blogging in Chinese).
Here’s an example for Tao tao micro blogging. --It was launched by QQ Tencent Inc. which is China's largest and most used Internet service portal. --The users can blog through Mobile phone, MSN, QQ, ect. (see the red circle on the right)
Here’s another example for Sina micro blogging site. (Sina is the largest infotainment web portal in China) --The users can type in within 140 Characters & insert smiling face, videos, ect. --It is the most popular micro-blogging service in China and is famous for its “celebrity effect”. With top 2000 users (50%) are VIP/Celebrity users, the rest users (50%) are ordinary users. --Here’s an example on the recent hot topic on Sina micro-blogging site, the earthquake in Qinghai province.
There are several reasons for the popularity of micro-blogging in China. T he simplicity of usage . Very convenient to access through mobile phone and web. Less complicated webpage with lower technical requirement for user. Chinese micro-blogging sites can also be seamlessly updated through many of the country's popular chat services, enabling them to become a natural extension of the instant messaging culture that permeates the web. Mobile phones are another important component of China's growing micro-blog ecosystem. Micro-blogging can be easily bundled with person’s mobile phone, it’s delivered/sent out via SMS quickly from one to another and spread to the entire relationship circles. Efficient tool for buzz marketing . Micro-blogging lets people keep in touch with others through the exchange of quick, frequent answers , ideas, true emotions…it is offering a new promotional application for enterprises to connect with their consumers to amplify the promotion & micro-blogging turns to be included as a hot research topic in China on consumer behavior. Relationship circle effect . The user can simply click a “follow” button (which means they agree to receive the updated instant message from someone either the celebrity or the friends around them). In this way, the user can build-up, maintain and strengthen the relationship circle. Although the number of micro-blogging users are increasing rapidly in China, they are still a small size among all internet users (384 million- the 25th CNNIC report).
During the next few minutes we’ll be looking at Twitter in Japan. Firstly I’d like to give you an overview. ☆ Twitter was launched in Feb 2008.. ☆ There were 520K users in April 2009. In 4 months, it increased to 2 million users. ☆ Twitter’s mobile platform was launched in Oct 2009 because 95% of the users access the site through their mobile devices. ☆ Access to social networks through mobile has been around for some time in Japan and many of these users are charged to view certain contents. There were discussions at the end of 2009 implementing a similar system but at the beginning of this year this idea was thrown out. ☆ Small to large businesses are taking advantage of this new communication tool. ☆ Softbank is one of the biggest mobile phone companies in Japan. The CEO the company, Mr. Song uses Twitter as a tool for communication with his 20K employees. ☆ Kanji is the writing system in Japan. One character can be one word. For example, the word ocean in Japanese is Umi, one character. Because of this, there’s more information in one posting. ☆
Let’s now move on to a key difference. There are a few differences with the Japanese platform but today, we will be talking about Advertisements. ☆ Here is the English Twitter homepage and ☆ here’s the Japanese version. Can you spot the difference? ☆ I would like to draw your attention to the red circle. This is an advertisement for coffee. The ads are located on the top right hand corner of the page.
There are a variety of different products and companies advertised on Twitter, such as ☆ 7-11, ☆ beverages and ☆ movies. These ads usually have a link to the twitter feed…for example, ☆ here’s the ad for Panasonic. And if you ☆ click on it, it takes you to this page.
Let’s now look at the next slide which shows an advertisement for a convenience store, Lawson. What is being advertised here has nothing to do with its products. This is a decoration tool for your twitter profile photo. ☆☆
From a survey conducted by Fem Marketing House, the number of long term users was low. More than half of the panel did not know or only heard of the name Twitter. Since the survey was conducted, we have seen a lot of exposure of Twitter everywhere for example, ☆ On April 15th FujiTV started airing a new drama about five young people meeting and starting relationships on Twitter. ☆ Masato Kogure an author of a Japanese Twitter book estimates that the number of users will be at 10 million by the end of this year. As a final point, I’d like to add that Japan has taken Twitter and changed it to its own way. Thank you and I would like to hand this over back to Ray.
The initial feedback from the Twitter question, what is market research, in 140 characters.
Interaction led to discussion in the room. Tweets from people there such as Eric Salama and Tom Stone Tweets from people following from afar, such as Julia Bode from The Research Agency, New Zealand