Abrams Research Blog

There comes a time in the life of every business when a difficult reality must be faced: value optimization cannot continue indefinitely when the underlying business model fails to generate sufficient profit. Twitter’s most recent announcement, that it intends to integrate advertisements through Promoted Tweets, is therefore the long-expected, highly anticipated (and somewhat feared) step towards diminishing the disparity between operating costs and profit.

Unsurprisingly, the news has been met with a firestorm of opinions. But before we get to that, let’s cover the changes.

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Imagine this: two girls age 10 and 12 became trapped in a storm drain in Australia, and used a cell phone to update their Facebook status and alert their friends and family to their predicament.

It should be noted that cell phones also have features for dialing the police.

Social networking is more popular than email, nowadays, and mobile devices have adapted to bring social media into the realm of instant contact. We rely on social networking and the age of the instant as our new modes of communication. It is not merely that social networking features exist in mobile devices, but people are using them more and more their default mode of communication (even in emergency situations!)

Mobile devices are adapting their technology to accommodate users’ need for social media connectivity. Mobile devices are modeling their social media integration after social media programs such as TweetDeck, and all of the new applications that are coming out for mobile devices further fuel the need for instant information. Starbucks has created an app that allows users to order their coffee from their mobile device, pay through the same device, and locate the nearest store to pick it up from. Users do not even have to wait in line anymore. Everything is about ease of use and instantaneous access.

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