More than 190 million visitors per month isn’t bad for a web phenomenon that is widely criticised for being inconsequential, ephemeral and narcissistic. But despite the huge popularity of Twitter, which scores 370,000 new users every day, making money out of its customers has proved more of a challenge – until yesterday, when the social network unveiled a new look that will have advertisers salivating. 

 The changes, which will hit all users’ screens over the next few weeks, see a two-pane layout replacing the straightforward list of tweets; the second pane can perform a number of functions, but the most significant is displaying media content relating to that tweet without the user having to visit another website.

 Yesterday’s launch was, according to Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, “not for the sake of advertisers”. But the redesign will excite marketeers traditionally inhibited by the site’s stripped-back look. Twitter may finally be on the brink of demonstrating why $160m [£103m] of venture capital has been ploughed into the company so far.

Twitter’s popularity – much like Google’s – has been built on its simplicity. You post a message, or a link to a website, and anyone bothering to pay attention will see it. If they want to, they can reply. Easy. But as Twitter has grown and new uses have been found for it by individuals and organisations, there has been a heavy reliance on third-party services that help to organise and display Twitter-related data in more user-friendly ways.

 Applications such as TweetDeck or Seesmic help fit more information on one screen; it could be an image-hosting service like yFrog or Twitpic; or devices that shortened web addresses such as is.gd that help squeeze long URLs into Twitter’s 140-character limit. In effect, a whole industry has grown up around enhancing Twitter and addressing its shortcomings. Williams himself admitted to shortcomings at yesterday’s launch, and this revamp is a bold attempt to persuade the estimated 22 per cent of users who tweet without visiting the site itself that it is time to come back.

 No wonder advertisers are eager; thus far, marketing messages on the service have been restricted to “promoted tweets” (the opportunity for a company’s tweet to appear at the top of Twitter search results) and “sponsored trends” (corporate branding of a topic that’s getting a lot of attention). Even these have been shown to be powerful; Coca-Cola’s recent foray into sponsored trends saw them achieve 86 million page impressions in 24 hours.

 Twitter users are regarded as less passive than the average web user, and with more screen “real estate” now available to advertisers, their engagement is predicted to become more intense.

 As the new-look Twitter gains traffic and collects more data about our clicking habits and interests, it will become even more valuable in the corporate world as advertisements can be targeted at users more specifically. The only danger Twitter faces is the risk of upsetting a significant proportion of its users who aren’t concerned about commercial pressures on the company, and would rather have an ad-free experience.

 Facebook’s past blunders in particular have shown that our tolerance of prominent marketing messages can be low. Twitter has always prided itself on a gently-gently approach; the new-look site will be introduced slowly, with the opportunity to switch to the old interface if we wish. But a Twitter service that’s so light on advertising can’t last for ever; after all, a business without an income isn’t a business at all.

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Like Google and Bing, Yahoo! has integrated Twitter into their search results. But that wasn’t good enough for Bartz and the gang. No, they wouldn’t be satisfied until people could conduct some serious Tweeting from Yahoo! itself. And so a deal has been struck.

If you so choose, you will be able to access your Twitter feed from Yahoo! including Mail and the Sports portal. You’ll also be able to Tweet to your heart’s content, directly from Yahoo!

Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president, consumer products group, Yahoo! decided the best way to give official comment on the matter would be through the delivery of a 140 character statement:

We’re turning the key to the online social universe — you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!

Lest you think this is solely a boon for Yahoo!, remember that while Twitter is growing fast, they’ll still benefit from a boost of exposure to the millions of Yahooligans worldwide.

“The information in one single tweet can travel light-years farther with this Yahoo! integration,” said Twitter cofounder, Biz Stone. “Tweets in more places brings relevance where and when you need it most.”

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Watch your backs Facebook and Twitter. Google is coming for you and it looks like they’re playing for keeps. Tongue’s were wagging as the search engine rolled out yet another addition to the expansive Google empire. Google Buzz is the company’s definitive entry into the social media arena.

According to Google’s official blog:

“Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most.”

Taking a page from social media content aggregator FriendFeed, Buzz takes status updates, photos, and other content from Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites and streams them through your Gmail account. Just like the big boys, Buzz allows users to “Like” a piece of content as well as comment. It also gives recommendations on content you might like based on your friends’ activities. Buzz will also provide suggestions on follow-worthy people based on conversations friends might be having with the person as well as your own feedback. The more you click the “interested” or “not interested” buttons, the better Google Buzz will become with giving quality recommendations. Conversely, it will also use this system to eliminate the content you’re not interested in like spam or someone’s out of touch rant on why Google Wave will revolutionize the web.

In addition to being integrated into your Gmail account, Buzz can also be accessed via cell phone. Buzz Mobile will take a page from Foursquare, Yelp, and the like and use your GPS to update your followers on your current location. Google has already rolled out an app for Blackberry and iPhone users, but it can also be accessed in Google Maps. You can also post photos and comments in the Google Maps version as evidenced by Google’s example of a user posting a picture of a minor accident. Another cool feature is the integration of Google Voice. Using Voice, you can simple speak your update instead of aggravating that thumb injury you’ve sustained from over-texting.

Google Buzz has already started popping up in users’ Gmail accounts and everyone should have it over the next few days.

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A 48-hour-old fundraising campaign to help Haiti earthquake victims, done solely through text messages, was already stunning Red Cross officials on Thursday when it hit $3 million. By Friday morning, the tally had more than doubled. (notes: Please still help those victims online and offline)

The campaign, made viral on networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, had raised $8 million by Friday, according to a Twitter message from the White House that was reposted on the Red Cross account. The campaign leads a spate of online efforts that have allowed people to help victims of the devastating quake.

The Red Cross campaign’s tally would be double the $4 million that was donated to all charities by mobile texts in all of 2009, a spokeswoman said.  Abi Weaver, spokeswoman for the Red Cross, confirmed that the mobile giving campaign hit the $7 million mark about 11 p.m. Thursday.  “It’s shattered any record that we’ve seen with mobile giving before,” Wendy Harman, social media manager for the Red Cross, said Thursday.  Friday morning, “Red Cross” was among the 10 most popular topics on Twitter.

Many celebrities, including singer Adam Lambert, actor Ben Stiller, cyclist Lance Armstrong and actress Lindsay Lohan, used their Twitter feeds to plead for earthquake-relief donations.  “Yele haiti now for the disaster,” Lohan tweeted Wednesday, referring to musician Wyclef Jean’s online earthquake relief fund. “Please do all that you can. Please.” Yele Haiti also has launched a text message fundraising campaign.

Armstrong, an active Twitter user with more than 2.3 million followers, posted that his Livestrong Foundation had pledged $250,000 to humanitarian aid groups.

The online classified site Craigslist posted a list of relief organizations, including Medecins sans Frontieres and CARE, along with links via which users can donate.

Multiple Facebook groups related to Haiti had been created by Thursday. One of the largest, Earthquake Haiti, had nearly 170,000 members. Many Facebook users also were changing their status updates to reflect when they’d donated to the Red Cross campaign, thus encouraging their friends to do likewise.

Earlier Thursday, when the Red Cross topped $3 million in text and social media donations — it hit nearly $40 million from all sources by late Thursday — spokesman Jonathan Aiken described it as “a phenomenal number that’s never been achieved before.”

“People text up to three times at 10 bucks a pop,” Aiken said. “You’re talking about roughly 300,000 people actually spontaneously deciding, ‘I can spare $10 for this.’ And that’s remarkable.”

As of late Thursday, more than half of all donations to the Red Cross’s Haiti relief effort had been received online, according to a news release. Harman said the Red Cross has been active on Twitter since the California wildfires of 2007.

The organization also has accounts on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube as well as its own blog, and hosts an online newsroom that provides updates on the organization’s disaster responses. She said the Red Cross has “a pretty robust social media strategy” but that the Haiti response is unprecedented.  “It feels like every person who has a Twitter account has tweeted about it, which is a pretty amazing thing to see,” she said.

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To deliver useful search returns from the so-called real-time Web–such as seconds-old Twitter “tweets” reporting traffic jams–Google has adapted its page-ranking technology and developed new algorithmic tricks and filters to keep returns relevant, according to a leading Google engineer.

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Over at MIT’s Technology Review, they have the goods on how Google ranks tweets. Ok, like your regular old organic results, they didn’t learn the secret sauce. But they did get some good info on how you can optimize your Twitter account so your Tweets have a better chance of appearing in real-time search results.

Reputation is key. Who follows you determines reputation. If your followers have a lot of followers, that gives more authority to your tweets.

“You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers,” his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, [Google Fellow] Amit Singhal says. It is “definitely, definitely” more than a popularity contest, he adds.

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

But Singhal also told Technology Review it’s not a popularity contest. They also have to weed out the noise. Hashtags make that task difficult. And sorting through trending topics when so many people are Tweeting is a challenge, too.

Singhal pointed out that Twitter the only source of real-time information for Google. Sources such as blogs and news are also relevant and being weaved into the real-time search experience.

Takeaways:

1. Cultivate your following on Twitter.
2. Don’t overdo the hashtag.
3. Be comprehensive in your real-time efforts. Don’t just focus on Twitter.

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