Tweetmeme's Meteoric Rise Reveals Twitter's Search Issue

Techmeme has become one my primary navigational sources for daily reading / news (others include email, Google RSS, Facebook, NYTimes, TechCrunch, etc). Twitter isn't yet there because it is simply too noisy to be efficient.

Techmeme solves a specific need: revealing quality, trending content across a variety of blogs and news sources. That same need exists on Twitter... and it can be argued it is both a harder AND more important task (after all, there is more noise and less context).

Perhaps that is why Tweetmeme is surging: it solves an important need for an immensely popular service. And as Twitter grows, Tweetmeme becomes even more important, sources more content and services a larger community. According to Compete, Tweetmeme now reaches 3.6m monthly uniques - a hefty number by any measurement. Equally impressive though is that Tweetmeme's reach represents nearly 20% of Twitter's monthly uniques (19.7m). Furthermore, as Twitter's growth flattened from April to May, Tweetmeme's more than doubled (1.6m to 3.6m):

Is this to say that Tweetmeme is the perfect service? No.

It is important however because it demonstrates: - a glaring need / opportunity within Twitter (either for third parties or Twitter itself) - the difficulty that finding poses (both algorithmic search and social search)... particularly in Twitter's dynamic world of 140 characters - a clear demand from users (after all, Tweetmeme's monthly uniques are 20% of Twitter's!) - a threat for sites like Digg and Stumbleupon... which Tweetmeme (or Twitter itself) can effectively compete with - an opportunity for Bit.ly - which is sitting on a goldmine of data surrounding referrals and links

Bit.ly Adds 'Pass Through' Metrics - Hugely Valuable

I have written before that data around referral traffic could be a business model for both Twitter and Friendfeed. And as Twitter's growth accelerates, I believe this more than when I wrote the article one year ago. In fact, it is the reason that Bit.ly surpassed TinyURL so quickly: data. Bit.ly always provided metrics around clickthroughs - which proves to be a difficult measurement within Google Analytics (battle between referral traffic, direct traffic and the increasing usage of apps like Seesmic).

Tonight I noticed what appears to be a new set of metrics from Bit.ly: direct clicks and total clicks (what I am referring to as "pass throughs"). Retweet is a phenomenon on Twitter - but measurement is difficult because most people retweet with their own encoded URLs... consequently muddying the data and only representing a portion of the traffic. It is still incomplete data because it appears that Bit.ly is aggregating data based on the landing URL and it thus only represents activity for Bit.ly-encoded URLs... nevertheless, it is valuable for marketers in understanding the virality of shared content.

I still believe that richer analytics are valuable enough for marketers (who represent much of Twitter's activity) to represent a real subscription service... just look at how much businesses and marketers spend on sites like LinkedIn. Perhaps that means that Twitter acquires Bit.ly and expands on the analytics offering; or, perhaps it means that Twitter creates a service internally.

Bit.ly Goes Mainstream: URLs Included in Magazines

Services and brands enter mainstream pop culture when they:1. Reach critical mass, and/or 2. Provide value in a way that makes their usage critical

Use Facebook and Twitter as examples. From print to television, both are now routinely included as informational sources and communications tools (for instance, CNN's in-show advertisements for their Twitter accounts and ESPN / Sportscenter's ticker promotion for their Twitter accounts). Then there are services that have great online popularity but are far too geeky (or perhaps irrelevant) to go mainstream... and thus reach offline popularity. Despite being the most popular URL shortener - Bit.ly remains an online utility that is essentially a tool usage on more popular sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Perhaps that is changing. The below image is from ESPN The Magazine and includes a reference to a bit.ly URL. It serves a purpose for ESPN: it is there to save space (and likely also not directly promote the website's brand).

But do most people know what to do with this? There isn't even an 'http://' before the 'bit.ly/blueroom' mention!