Why Twitter will win big in the social media sweepstakes…

Social media is a massive, exciting, and confusing juggernaut for brands and consumers. It’s become aggrandized by periodicals, marketers, and “experts” that now find every opportunity to prove that social media is going to make everyone rich. Some of that is legitimate. Facebook and Myspace have amassed an enormous constituency and become the defacto portal for Generation Y and Millenials. Advertisers are clamoring to catch it on it’s way up, unlike what happened with search marketing, and are praying that social media will fill the gap that’s been lost on television and radio advertising. What does this all mean? It means that social media is itself a big contest to see which site will be the Google of Web 2.0.

And I think Twitter will win.

Why? Facebook is somewhat closed, Myspace is cluttered with ads, and Twitter is neither. Twitter offers two benefits better than the other two.

1. Twitter offers consumers the opportunity to participate and have a voice, much like blogging, but with a smaller barrier to entry.
2. Twitter provides companies a way to interact with consumers in a direct and real way.

Other social sites do this today, but none have amassed the user base and following of Twitter which leads me to another reason why Twitter will win big. Despite it’s problems, Twitter continues to grow without enjoying the publicity of Facebook or Myspace. Microblogging seems to be a waste of time at first, but somehow Twitter hooks you, and instead of a waste of time it becomes more about simplicity. Twitter is simple. It’s simple to understand, to use, to network within, to embed in your blog, to drop into Facebook. Twitter was the first real non-business thing I did with my Blackberry that made me feel like the Blackberry was more than a business tool. Twitterific is the first application I downloaded from the App Store for my iPhone. I don’t think Twitter is going to solve climate change, but it may have an impact on the election. Barack Obama is on Twitter, and I have to think it was part of the reason he reignited a generation of voters who were tired of not being heard. Because fundamentally, Twitter is about being heard.

Sure, you can pass this off as someone in love with the platform and blind to it’s flaws. But on the contrary, the flaws somehow have reinforced for me the power of Twitter. When Twitter goes down I check back on Jaiku and Plurk, and in minutes or hours, I’m back where all the other folks are. This is usually the point in this discussion where someone mentions FriendFeed and I gag. There are a small number of people who will ever really need FriendFeed, and they would all be better served by encouraging casual social network users and consumers everywhere to get on Twitter. FriendFeed does for bloggers and social media gurus what Facebook does for everyone else, and if they think for 5 minutes about more than their own “socialebrity” status they will realize that the long term success of social media depends on mass adoption.

Which leads to my last point about why Twitter should, and will eventually win the social media sweepstakes. It’s truly based around the idea of the “brand” - a concept that is intrinsic to American culture and consumer behavior. Twitter empowers brands in a way that was taken away by search engines, where anyone with an SEO playbook could rule. Twitter allows consumers to discuss, in an empowered way, and does not let companies hide behind a shiny website or an SEO strategy. There are no snake oil landing pages on Twitter (although there are plenty of snake oil salesman.) What does BMW get right, besides making cars - branding. The same can be said about Apple, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, Adidas, Honda, Toyota, Timbuktu, Marvel Comics, Samsung, Sony….

Twitter allows companies to put the art and science back into marketing, but this time by including the consumer. That’s the untapped magic here. Build your brand strategy WITH the consumer, not FOR them. Companies say, “We want this type of consumer so go do lots of research about how to win them.” With Twitter, you simply say “What do you want from us?” And then listen.

When search engines empowered the consumer, companies fought the movement and refused to let go of control over the flow of information. That didn’t work. The accepted definition of “interactive marketing” is basically “build a website people enjoy visiting,” instead of one where they actually interact. The social web changed this and became about REAL interaction, between people, and that’s why Twitter gets me excited about web marketing, and that’s why I’m betting on it to succeed. Because of all the social media sites or social networks, Twitter seems to encourage interaction in a way that companies can participate in.

If you haven’t already, track me down on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/originalanalog let me hear your thoughts below.