On  Monday, Brian Morrissey at Ad Week put out an article about Twitter’s impending advertising platform and what features from various external satellite technologies it will likely integrate into its own program. Morrissey thinks the popularity both search and trending topics will be heavily featured in the new program, and he also sees increasing value in companies who’ve found a way to flow ad-copy into twitter streams or place units on various Readers such as HootSuite or UberTwitter.

While we think these are all accurate assessments of ways Twitter can retool traditional advertising models, we hope that one thing missing from Morrissey’s musing makes it into the final rollout of the program.

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No matter what you find yourself on twitter for, many people wind up getting obsessed about their following count. In spite of the overwhelming amount of information available on the Internet about “how to increase your follower count on twitter”, very few accounts actually have a four digit , much less five  or six digit follower count. Now the big trap is to get caught up in the follower account because many of these high follower profiles wind up having low valuable followers.
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Will Google Ever Sit back and Relax?

With yet another sweeping gesture, Google manages to make all heads turn with its latest real-time search release. With Twitter giving Google nightmares, thanks to the latter’s real-time updates and even Bing taking longish strides by picking up partnerships with Myspace and facebook, this move from Google isn’t surprising, but it is certainly welcome. (more…)

Become a fan @ http://www.facebook.com/pathinteractive!

We will also be having some promotions and giveaways for our facebook fans, like Restaurant certificates, shopping gift cards, etc…hopefully some cool things from our clients too (more…)

Twitter getting smarter

Twitter is trying to organize and promote tweeters with yesterday’s release of their new feature, “Twitter Lists”.  It is not available to everyone just yet.  For the last year and a half, we have relied on applications like TweetDeck and Seesmic to organize our twitter followers into categories and groups.  Outside of these applications and being able to monitor mentions and direct messages on twitter directly, you were left with a constant endless stream of status updates of all the people you were following, unless you followed a small amount of tweeters. (more…)

You may have noticed a change in your facebook home page as of yesterday.  Facebook is now offering two feeds, a “live feed” and a “news feed”.  You can select either one, but the live feed is the one that you are most familiar with as it shows (more…)

The New Email is Here

Well, not quite yet, but last week Google did invite up to 100,000 users to a beta application called Google Wave.  The previous smaller amount of invitations went mostly to developers in two other waves (pun intended).  Google Wave has been creating a buzz in the tech, social media, and blogging communities ever since the I/O developer conference in San Francisco back in May.  Trying to capitalize on the attention, some who were fortunate enough to get invitations, were  attempting to sell their Google Wave invites on Ebay!

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Well, obviously everywhere.  There is no surprise here that the crossover continues to move at an incredible pace.  Everyday we see a few more marketers find a place for Twitter in their marketing mix, even if there is no real strategic approach to using the platform to further their objectives.

For top brand marketers to small businesses to celebrities, twitter continues to provide a new outlet for communication.

At the end of the day, the real-time web’s social element is the key motivating factor for use.  Move aside the early adopting tech heads who compare sizes of their iPod application centers and you find the highest form of social communication: gossip!    Straight, simple, irrelevant and highly entertaining celebrity gossip!

Twitter the personal celebrity PR Agency – for a few seconds a day

I admit that in my most private moments, my eyes drift over to the wife’s recent copy of Us Weekly to check out what’s happening with my favorite stars. (I really did not say that and don’t tell her).  What caught my eye was how adopted Twitter has become in mainstream media.  The feature was “Trend Alert! Stars Who twitter”, and although celebrities have been rifling out their “tweets” for a while now, it looks like it has found a home for exposure in one of the top gossip weeklies.

John Mayer twitter and other celebrities

Celebrities like John Mayer: twitter.com/johncmayer, Tina Fey: twitter.com/tinafey, Britney: twitter/britneyspears and Demi: twitter.com/mrskutcher all got highlights in Us Weekly to further their gossip brand with quoted “tweets” that readers gobble up.

Twitter provides a real point of personal engagement for celebrities with their fans.  It also allows them to reinvigorate their brands by keeping them young, relevant and youthful, yes Demi…you’re always 25 to me.

Celebrities can also use their “tweets” to misguide, manage spin and create controversy just like their PR agencies are challenged to do.  Most importantly the real-time web allows them to respond to the trends and stem rumors before they get out of hand.  PR in a few seconds can go a long way for both sides of the rumor mill.

Brand Gossip is just not as fun on twitter

Just like celebrities, Marketers need to figure out how to make it work for their brands. The reality is that brands with raving fans like John Mayer are going to have a much easier time attracting and keeping a following. Marketers for less popular brands need to think outside the box to tap into some unique content or gossip of relevance, or create new ways to capitalize on the real-time web.

Path has had some success adopting twitter for clients and we will highlight a few of these in coming posts.

What marketers do you think are doing it right?  Wrong?  Share your thoughts and let us know.

Michael Coppola is Founder & CEO at Path Interactive, a NYC-based search engine marketing firm.