E-CONSULTANCY.COM — While Twitter has consistently struggled to make a monetisation strategy stick, third party developers may have hit on a solution: haggling. With paid tweets and trending topics, Twitter has flirted with the idea that buzz can be charged for, but not as directly as a new system devised by NYC marketers Christian Behrendt and Leif Abraham. Clearly, the pair saw no revenue in Twitter, so have instead directly targeted the tweet itself. Their ‘Pay with a Tweet’ system is at heart a barter economy. Download a song or information, or purchase retail goods. When it’s time to pay, use a tweet...

BRANDSAVANT — A recent study posted in AdAge would have you think so. The study, conducted by an agency called 360i (direct link to the data here) examined 1800 tweets and determined that only 12% of updates posted to Twitter mentioned a brand – and for most of those, the brand was Twitter itself. The implicit conclusion: no one is talking about your brand on Twitter, so brands can direct their attention elsewhere. I’m certainly not going to argue that Twitter is anywhere near as significant as other channels, and it is true that many marketers use Twitter like a big “easy button” for the Internet. Pushing it tends to give you immediate feedback, which is gratifying, but also tends to summon other marketers. I’m not willing to go completely down the road of irrelevance based upon this study, however, for one important reason...

SOCIAL MEDIA EXAMINER — For Microsoft’s Xbox support team, there’s no such thing as unwanted messages on Twitter – no matter how vulgar they may be. So why is a $58 billion company spending time listening to off-color tweets? Because "foul-mouthed tweens" just might be the first tip-off of a major service outage. Before any calls or emails come in, the support team can catch a tweet and get technical folks on the task. This article reveals how the Xbox team relies on Twitter to reduce support costs...

THE SOCIAL TIMES — If you tweet, ask yourself: Would I pay for this service if it started charging? Those polled in the Center for the Digital Future’s annual report on the impact of the internet on Americans answered a resounding "no" – all of them. Not a single person who said they used Twitter responded in the affirmative to the question of whether they would pay for the privilege to tweet. Nearly half – 49 percent – of those polled said they used Twitter...

MEDIAPOST — Brand marketers still lack the skills and the knowledge to effectively tap Twitter to have a meaningful conversation with consumers. The site remains an important tool for listening to consumers and becoming more familiar with their needs, but a striking difference on how the two use Twitter and the limited conversations create a wedge in the conversation, according to research released Tuesday from digital marketing firm 360i. People -- not companies -- continue to tweet, according to the six-month study from 360i. More than 90% of tweets come from consumers, and marketers only authorize 8%. Only 12% of consumer tweets mention a brand...