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Comment by sosborn | Hacker News Reader

Twitter is the new water cooler.

I don't use it, but I can see why some people do. Having said that, I really don't see how they will be profitable in the long term.

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My company (like many many others) have tried advertising on Facebook, and other social networks (Twitter included).

You pay a bunch of money to them, and get almost nothing in return.

It's not nearly as effective dollar-for-dollar as using, for example, google advertising... or just investing in using Email Marketing and building a list.

(I don't see how any social networks will be profitable long term).

I think specific social networks will be profitable. Such as a doctors social network, or golfers network. I think a larger catch all network has issues as we're all talking about here.

We came to the conclusion that people (customers) don't visit social networks (of any kind) with the goal of being sold to.

They visit social networks with the intention to be social. Reading an advert, clicking on it, and buying some product is the last thing on their mind.

Why are you surprised that people didn't react to advertising on a medium they use for personal communication?

We don't go to Twitter to read ads.

Social networks are entertainment. Entertainment ads are not great for directly driving sales. No one really expects people to see a TV ad, then buy the product or service 10 seconds later. Well, Twitter is the same way. So if you try to measure its effectiveness the same way you measure a search ad, it's going to look terrible.

Twitter is good for brand marketing, which is inherently harder to measure. It's also great for reaching audiences that are heavy users of Twitter--like tech folks, "thought leaders," and reporters.

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