social media: 2013

Friday, 20 September 2013

Marissa Mayer Converts Users to Yahoo One Retweet at a Time

By Seth Fiegerman2013-09-19 17:06:50 UTC

Marissa Mayer has worked to bring back users to Yahoo by improving its products. On Thursday, she took a different approach: Twitter.

Over the course of several hours on Thursday, Mayer retweeted and replied to nearly a dozen people on Twitter who pledged to make Yahoo their homepage in exchange:

Screen Shot 2013-09-19 at 12.33.34 PM

Mayer even retweeted one user who promised to stop making fun of Yahoo's new logo, which has been widely criticized by users and the media:

Screen Shot 2013-09-19 at 12.31.23 PM

Since taking over as CEO at Yahoo last year, Mayer has occasionally used her Twitter account to share news about the company and respond to customer service complaints, though this appears to be the most she has engaged with users to date.

Mayer isn't the only CEO to engage with customers on Twitter from time to time. John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, has responded to customer complaints on Twitter, as has News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch.

What do you think of Mayer's strategy? Share in the comments.

Image: Jemal Countess/Getty

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'Burlington Coat Fact' Is the Parody Twitter Account You've Always Wanted

By Todd Wasserman2013-09-19 17:00:58 UTC

In the vein of Condescending Corporate Brand Page, someone has created a fake Burlington Coat Factory Twitter account that provides trenchant satire about social media marketing.

The @BurlCoatFactory account, which had around 5,000 followers at this writing, could pass for a real corporate Twitter account — in fact, Burlington Coat Factory mistakenly linked to the account from its website recently. A closer read reveals that many of the tweets are nonsensical and absurd. Here are a few of the greatest hits:

Yes it is halfway to the week but since when. #coats
— Burlington Coat Fact (@BurlCoatFactory) September 18, 2013

The cat said stop in today and purrrrrchase a #coat
— Burlington Coat Fact (@BurlCoatFactory) September 12, 2013

Today we remember many thing
#DontForgetting
— Burlington Coat Fact (@BurlCoatFactory) September 11, 2013

For planning of the weekend what are they? Shopping?? Yes #coats
— Burlington Coat Fact (@BurlCoatFactory) August 16, 2013

Tell us if you have a new coat! Use hashtag #YesIHaveANewCoat to tell us if you have a new coat.
— Burlington Coat Fact (@BurlCoatFactory) August 14, 2013

How is your day, today? Was it yesterday? #coats
— Burlington Coat Fact (@BurlCoatFactory) July 30, 2013

Tell us your favorite parody Twitter account in the comments below.

[via New York Magazine ]

Image: Getty/Tim Boyle

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Marissa Mayer Converts Users to Yahoo One Retweet at a Time

By Seth Fiegerman2013-09-19 17:06:50 UTC

Marissa Mayer has worked to bring back users to Yahoo by improving its products. On Thursday, she took a different approach: Twitter.

Over the course of several hours on Thursday, Mayer retweeted and replied to nearly a dozen people on Twitter who pledged to make Yahoo their homepage in exchange:

Screen Shot 2013-09-19 at 12.33.34 PM

Mayer even retweeted one user who promised to stop making fun of Yahoo's new logo, which has been widely criticized by users and the media:

Screen Shot 2013-09-19 at 12.31.23 PM

What do you think of Mayer's strategy? Share in the comments.

Image: Jemal Countess/Getty

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Watch an 'Honest Take' on Chipotle's Scarecrow Ad

By Lauren Indvik2013-09-19 17:53:02 UTC

Last week, a beautifully animated short video introduced the web to a fantastical, dystopian future — one in which a monolithic factory farming operation, Crow Foods Inc., controls all food production.

Animals are confined, abused; consumers are all served the same bland, artificially engineered food in uniform takeout boxes. The enchanting voice of Fiona Apple and the sad expressions of the video's protagonist — a brave farmer-scarecrow who recognizes that not all is right in this new world — make for a moving video, one that's racked up more than 5.7 million views on YouTube.

The video isn't a PSA, funded by a non-profit advocating for animal or farmer rights. It is an ad for Chipotle, makers of upscale fast food that comes in a few simple templates — burritos, burrito bowls, tacos, quesadillas — in takeout bags that remind me more of Crow Food Inc.'s fare than the scarecrow farmer's alternative. As lovely and moving as the video is, I can't make the connection with the brand that sponsored it (even if it's a theme Chipotle has played on in the past).

Apparently, Funny or Die also struggled to make the connection, which has released a modified, "honest" take on the video.

Here's Funny or Die's version:

And here's the original version:

Which one rings truer to you?

[via Grub Street]

Image: Chipotle

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Does Your Business Need a Full-Time Social Media Team?

By Todd Wasserman2013-09-19 14:57:07 UTC

While some small business owners need convincing that social media can help their businesses, Steve Acree doesn't have any doubts. He doesn't have any time, either.

Acree, founder and owner of Memphis, Tenn.-based Seismic Audio, says he and his staffers went whole hog on social media for two weeks in August, but soon realized that the time-consuming strategy compromised their regular workload. "I found myself late to some meetings because I was trying to write a post or find a picture to post," Acree says. "It was much more of a time commitment than I originally thought."

The fortnight of frenetic activity reaped some benefits. When we checked in with Seismic a month ago, the brand had around 70,000 fans. Now it has 73,000. The brand also picked up 150 Twitter followers, about two-thirds of which are "legit," Acree says. "We were tickled."

So far, most companies in our Social Media Makeover series have either reaped modest benefits or have seen little or no improvement. Seismic's case was a bit different — the company realized that its social media outreach was working, but also grasped the fact that it lacked manpower for the job.

Seismic didn't lack for direction, though. Mashable hooked Acree up with a social media marketing consultant Ernest Barbaric, a member of our Small Business Panel. Barbaric recommended, among other things, that the company post more often and use non-promotional content on social media outlets. In addition, Barbaric suggested that Seismic do some soul-searching in order to more effectively stake out brand positioning. Acree says Barbaric gave solid advice. "He knew his stuff and we're doing what he said," Acree says.

A look at Seismic's Facebook Page shows perhaps more promotional messages than the 10 to 1 ratio (non-promotional to promotional) that Barbaric advocates, but the content is fairly engaging and unique — like this Facebook post, which riffs on the name of electronic artist Deadmau5:

The mix of content also includes some seriousness as well as ties to Seismic products. For instance, a Sept. 11 post includes a link to a famous Budweiser Clydesdales ad that ran only once on TV in order to commemorate 9/11. On a more promotional note, this Facebook update features a DJ setup that a Seismic fan recently used:

After realizing that he needed to divert his workers (and himself) back to the company's bread and butter, Acree placed Seismic's social media presence in a holding pattern. "It just comes down to doing the work," says Barbaric. "It is a commitment, but so is sales."

Barbaric says that an in-house social media facilitator isn't the solution for every business. "I've worked with small companies that have a dedicated person and big companies that don't," he says. "It all depends on which eggs you want to put in which basket."

Acree has decided that Seismic needs a full timer. (Any readers interested in such a position — and in living in Memphis — should contact the company here.) Not everyone goes that route, however. For companies that can't bankroll another staffer, Barbaric has a word of advice: "If you have a limited amount of resources, it would be a good idea to lower the amount you do; focus on three things rather than four."

Image: iStockphoto, Blueraymac

http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=1919978

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The JOBS Act: What Investors Need to Know

By Adam Popescu2013-09-19 15:17:37 UTC

On Monday, a new law takes effect that could change the face of startup investing.

The Jumpstart Our Jobs Act (a.k.a. the JOBS Act, which has nothing to do with jobs) is a bill that President Obama has called "game-changing" for its ability to help startups grow, hire and raise funding. Perhaps the most valuable (and least understood) part of the law is how it will alter the rules of startup advertising and investing.

Per the bill, the SEC will lift a 80-year ban on general solicitation of accredited investors (accredited refers to anyone with a net worth of $1 million, annual income of $200,000 for the last two years, or $300,000 combined with their spouse). This means startups can advertise everywhere — from billboards to television commercials.

For most, these changes remain a legal gray area filled with more questions than answers. To help shed some much needed light, here are three key tips for entrepreneurs on the do's and don'ts of the new law.

Businesses are free to advertise their funding needs as they see fit. This means "anything from highway billboards, newspaper ads, or crowdfunding platforms," explains Judd Hollas, the CEO of EquityNet, a crowdfunding company that has raised more than $200 million analyzing privately-held businesses and estimating valuations, risk and investment return.

Hollas tells Mashable this advertising change will be a shot in the arm for startups. "Thousands of previously inactive accredited investors will expand the available pool of capital for young businesses," he says.

Another crowdfunding option is Invested.in, a white label solution for companies looking to create custom fundraising platforms. The Los Angeles startup already powers sites for brands like Coca-Cola and ATB Financial.

In 2012, Invested.in partnered with Xpert Financial's Adam Draper, the son of mega Silicon Valley VC Timothy Draper. The two launched a startup marketplace turned accelerator called BoostFunder for both eager startups to raise up to $1 million and for investors to browse and pledge investments. The format is Kickstarter meets AngelList.

Before accepting any money, businesses must verify that all investors are accredited. Previously, only self-accreditation was required, but now potential investors must disclose income, assets and financial statements, as well as fill out Form D with the SEC.

"Business must actually ask for documentation from the investor that supports their accreditation status, based on income, assets, or other qualifications," Hollas says.

But it may not be as easy as asking, warns Alon Goren, the founder and president of Invested.in. Goren thinks the added hassle of filing paperwork and revealing a company's financial details may deter some from taking advantage of the change, which he describes as against the spirit of the JOBS Act.

It's a benefit-loss equation every entrepreneur and business must determine for themselves, but no risk equals no gain. Skittish companies may be those without positive revenue streams and profits. You can find more helpful rules from the SEC here.

Investing in a company doesn't automatically equate to earning money. Even a seemingly sure return can turn out to be a big loser. Thus, Hollas advises that investors should always perform due diligence on capital-seeking businesses.

A comprehensive due diligence checklist includes combing through a company's articles of incorporation (tax returns, audit reports, legal tax bills, personal property bills), legal documents and board and shareholder meeting minutes. To combat risk, Hollas suggests investing in a diversified portfolio of startups within different industries.

An iteration of the law in which investors can put money into crowdfunded mutual funds is likely a few years away.

Invested.in's Goren also wants a more streamlined process for businesses and investors and more options without stringent rules.

If enough startups speak up, more changes could be enacted. It probably won't take another 80 years for this law to change again, but it's not an overnight process, either.

What do you think about the new bill? What would you do differently if you were the one writing the legislation? Sound off in the comments.

Image: Chris Potter; Flickr

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Who are your top 6 innovators and entrepreneurial thought leaders?

Yesterday I was asked if I could pick five innovators and/or entrepreneurial thought leaders in the Silicon Valley/Bay area who I could shadow/learn from for a month. I provide six. My list is below:

Elon MuskMitch KaporBen HorowitzSheryl SandbergVinod KhoslaMary Grove

I’m already learning/worked with one on my list. I have five more to go.

Who are your top 6 innovators and entrepreneurial thought leaders that you would like to learn from?

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80+ Events in Entertainment, PR and More

By Emily Kaufman2013-09-19 17:00:52 UTC

Mashable's Events Board is a great place to find the leading conferences in your industry — whether it's advertising, technology, media or public relations. This week, we're highlighting five events that we think can help move your career forward. Our picks include events in New York and the Bay Area. If you don't find something that's right for you, check out more than 80 events featured on our complete listings.

On the Events Board, you can sort listings by when they were added, get discount codes as a Mashable reader and watch videos of past events to get a preview of what to expect. You can also follow our events account on Twitter, so you can catch the best events before they sell out.

demo day DEMO Fall 2013
Date: Oct. 15 to Oct. 17
Location: Silicon Valley, Calif.

Attend DEMO and experience two full days of "show, don't tell me" product demonstrations.
These aren't just any new products — these 60+ new products offer a glimpse into the future of where the technology industry is headed across mobile, enterprise, health, wearable computing, digital money, and other key consumer and tech categories.

CableFAX TV Innovation Summit 2013
Date: Sept. 24
Location: New York, N.Y.

Join your colleagues September 24 in New York City to brainstorm and strategize how television's new multiscreen dynamic continues to create opportunities and challenges for every segment of the industry -and how you can capitalize on these power shifts to grow your business. The CableFAX TV Innovation Summit is a day you can't afford to miss!

perfecttrip

The Perfect Trip DevCon
Date: Oct. 2
Location: San Francisco, Calif.

Tap the $259B business travel & expense market - attend Concur & TripIt's 1st Developer Conference for T&E Innovations
-Build Apps that reach 20M business travelers and 18,000 enterprises with Concur APIs.
-Learn why the business travel market is 3x more lucrative than the leisure travel market.
-Pitch your new travel app for an investment from the Perfect Trip Fund Awards - $100,000 in Prizes.
-Hear from Tim O'Reilly, Founder of O'Reilly Media and TripIt Investor.

digital pr summit

PR News Digital PR Summitl
Date: Oct. 16
Location: New York, N.Y.

Join PR News in New York on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, for the Digital PR Summit, a one-day immersion in the digital communications best practices that help drive organizations' reputations, media profiles and profitability. You'll have the opportunity to network with peers, share ideas and meet with some of the top digital strategists in PR, and we'll also preview some of the latest apps, tools and social platforms that you can't afford not to know about.

cynopsis

Cynopsis Future TV Summit
Date: Oct. 17
Location: New York, N.Y.

Networks (both Cable & Broadcast) are faced with eroding ratings and ad dollars shifting from TV to Digital. Thats why Cynopsis is presenting a conference on what networks are doing and what they need to do more of to aggressively evolve to compete, and profit in this shifting landscape. Join us as our experts share the latest business and advertising models for success.
Enter the code 'MASHABLE' to receive 10% the early bird rate!

Visit our full list of upcoming conferences and events here.

Want to promote your event on Mashable's Events Board? Submit it here.

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5 Surprising Places Where Ecommerce Is Taking Off

By Lauren Indvik2013-09-19 14:17:06 UTC

What characterizes a market that's primed for ecommerce growth? It's not a country's population size, income per capita, nor even the amount its residents are spending on retail goods every year — though those all play a role. Rather, a complex variety of factors signal immediate to near-term ecommerce opportunity in a given region, a new study from Forrester Research shows.

Take South Korea for example, which ranked fourth on Forrester's list of countries positioned for ecommerce expansion. Compared to others on the list, it has a fairly average income per capita of $22,000. But its consumers are ready to spend: It ranked third on the number of debit/credit cards per capita, fourth in market activity and intensity (stock values relative to GDP), and has a tech-savvy population. Government support is another positive indicator: The country has been regulating the growth of discount megastores, banning for example free shuttle services to shoppers in remote areas, which opens the way for smaller ecommerce businesses.

SEE ALSO: Ecommerce in China: How the World's Biggest Market Buys Online

Other surprising candidates to make the top 10 list were the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore and Sweden — surprising because they all have mature economies (versus, say, Brazil or China) and, compared to India and Russia, relatively small populations. As Forrester explains, no single factor — like Internet penetration or population size — equates to a large online retail market. Other variables, including consumer attitudes, a willingness to use credit and debit cards in lieu of cash, and a solid courier infrastructure all play a role.

Here are the 10 markets (out of 55) that present the biggest immediate to near-term ecommerce opportunity, according to Forrester:

1. U.S.
2. China
3. Japan
4. South Korea
5. UK
6. Germany
7. Netherlands
8. Norway
9. Singapore
10. Sweden

The U.S. outranked China by a large margin — in the study, the U.S. garnered a score of 73.4, versus China's 51.1. Though they are the two biggest retail markets in the world, more than half of U.S. consumers buy online, compared to one-fifth of Chinese. The Chinese government's encouragement of consumer consumption allows it to outrank other populous countries, like Russia and India.

Screen Shot 2013-09-19 at 9.47.05 AM

Japan is another interesting case. Although the size of Japan's retail market is half of that of the U.S., its consumers are wealthy and spend a lot on non-food retail goods, making Japan the third largest retail market in the world. It also has a tech-savvy population and a high rate of credit/debit card use per capita.

While the U.S. outranks China for now, it may not always remain the case. It has a population four times the size of the U.S., and demand for goods will increase in line with the continued growth of disposable income and population. "Depending on the success of the Chinese government in restructuring economic wealth policies in the coming years, China could be a serious contender for the most ecommerce-ready country," Forrester concludes.

Images: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images and Forrester

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7 Characteristics of Silicon Valley You Won’t Find in Asia

Anh-Minh Do for Tech in Asia 2013-09-20 08:40:12 UTC

There are a few things that are rather unique about Silicon Valley that you won’t see in Asia. They play a huge role in what kinds of startups come out of the ecosytem. And although it’s not Asia’s heyday yet, and Silicon Valley is still the indisputable Mecca of startups, we’re starting to see the inklings of a distinct culture in Asia. Here are seven things in the Valley you just won’t see in Asia:

I was sitting with a bunch of non-tech friends the other day, when one of them whipped out her iPhone. She says, “Hey guys, check out this new app I found called VendMo. It allows you to be able to transfer money to your friends after you get the bill.” I was mesmerized. You just don’t have this kind of situation in Vietnam. Most of the time, if you’re hearing such talk in Asia, you’re probably hanging out with other tech people. In San Francisco, startups have the convenient advantage of being able to assume that early adopters are in abundance.

There is no such luck in Asia. More often than not, ideas die before they even get implemented because there’s no early-adopter culture. It could be a great idea, but no one wants to try it. That means startups that do make it have to work really hard to make sure their idea actually has value to either businesses or consumers. Valley startups can work on frivolous things like UX design, hilarious marketing tactics, or as we saw at TechCrunch Disrupt’s hackathon, base ideas like TitStare.

My hat goes off to Valley folks: they really care about each other in a way that I don’t see happening in Asia. Putting Apple aside, you’d just have to spend a few hours on Quora and its startups topic and you’ll see how much people are willing to divulge about how to do startup, startup culture, and the trials and tribulations of being a founder. Valley people, nurtured in the heart of the laid back culture of California, have grown to share and help each other.

In Asia, we certainly see pockets of this, with mentorship becoming an imperative, but Asian culture is held back profoundly by not only an immaturity in how to work together but also a defensiveness in competing. If you fly around Asia meeting startup communities, you’ll slowly start to hear of all the dramas that torment each. Fundamentally, this prevents the kind of growth we see in the Valley. There, it’s profoundly swept away by the sheer size of the community and the overwhelming sense that everyone should help each other so all can win. It’s ultimately all about win-win.

People have been harping on this one repeatedly, and it’s for a good reason. Failure, across Asia, remains a stigma. As angel investor Dave McClure said in Japan, “Someone in a high position has to publicly fail so that other people can learn how to do it.” Nobody wants to fail and it’s inextricably tied to long-held Asian culture. In other words, it’s not going away anytime soon.

With almost every person I met on this trip, whether it be a startup or an investor or a journalist, everyone offered to help me in some way. And I noticed very quickly that they also offered to help everyone they met.

As competitive as Asia is, offering your help to someone else can also mean doing favors for a potential enemy. But people are unable to see past that and look at the long-term benefits.

Every time I visit the United States, it looks exactly the same. The landscape hasn’t changed much except for a few new Starbucks and a new building or statue here and there. Offices still have landline phones and people still drive cars on the same exact highways. Everything is like clockwork. It’s this firm foundation that Valley startups can build on top of.

Uber is a great example of this. It takes existing resources and people, and fashions a business model that sits perfectly on top of the infrastructure that already exists.

In Asia, especially developing Asia, forget about infrastructure. Forget about widespread usage of landlines and aligned highways. Asian startups are building for a land without layers, so they are forced to be the layers themselves. Texting is one beautiful example of how Asia leapfrogged landlines into new technologies that the Western world has only caught up to in the last few years. And today, we’re seeing unique examples of this with payment, logistics and ecommerce at the forefront.

First-world problems include not getting your eggs the way you want them and taking just a few more minutes to get a cab than you wanted to. If you watch American travelers going through Asia, it’s even more vivid. They shout and complain about things the locals take as normal. While chatting with Kevin Chen from Technode, he remarked on Spinlister, a new startup that was present at Disrupt, which is an Airbnb for bicycles. “They’re looking for problems to solve.”

In Asia, we’ve got more problems than we can bargain for. There’s so many low hanging fruit for startups to pick that most of them are rotten.

I first considering stating that “founders dream really, really big” when I remembered that Mark Zuckerberg just wanted to have a social network for college kids in the early days. And as Paul Graham stated, starting with a small problem actually pays off in the longer term. So, in a lot of ways, it’s the entire ecosystem around these founders that ends up dreaming big.

Everything in this world is a double-edged sword. Silicon Valley’s bubble is also its greatest asset. All of these elements come together to make the Valley the engine it is today. Loo Cheng Chuan, head of Singtel’s Local Life and Group Digital Life, had some penetrating insights into where Silicon Valley has an edge over Asia, and it’s all too true. On the other hand, the Valley’s bubble leaves it a bit isolated. After all, when Americans think of the World Series, it’s really just the United States and Canada.

With Asia, its time is coming. There are only about four Asian cities that are globally significant in the worldwide startup ecosystem. But the foundation is compelling. Asian startups are forced to swim in an ocean to survive. It’s the ones that can swim fast that make it.

Image: Justin Wyne

This article originally published at Tech in Asia here

Topics: Apps and Software, asia, Business, Dev & Design, Silicon Valley, Startups, Travel & Leisure, Work & Play

Tech in Asia brings Asia tech and startup news to the world.

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Everything You Need to Know About Twitter

By Taylor Casti2013-09-20 10:00:25 UTC

Twitter is having a good year. Acquisitions, new hires, a growing user base and impressive revenues are all adding to the chatter surrounding the latest social media IPO.

As everyone wonders what's next for the little blue bird, answers can be found in the company's history. Billions of tweets after its conception in 2006, Twitter has swayed elections, shattered records and really pissed off Alec Baldwin.

So from egg to IPO, we give you Twitter.

Twitter's story starts at Odeo, a podcast service startup founded by Noah Glass and ex-Googler Evan Williams. The startup was a product of Glass’s idea — that a message recorded on a phone could be converted into an MP3 hosted on the Internet — and Williams’ money, along with the money of about a dozen other investors. But the company wasn't making much headway, and in an attempt at reinvention, Glass and Williams held a daylong brainstorming session to generate new ideas.

It was during this session that Jack Dorsey first introduced the idea that would become Twitter. Dorsey’s idea was that one individual could, using SMS and a specific number, send a message out to a small group of people via a public network. The number became “40404,” the project became “twttr,” and a social media network was born.

So Dorsey, Biz Stone and Florian Weber, managed by Noah Glass, set out to build it. At 4:50 PM on March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey sent out the first tweet:

just setting up my twttr
— Jack Dorsey (@jack) March 21, 2006

After a few months of practice as interoffice communication at Odeo, twttr was released into the wild on July 15, 2006. In a world of T9 text input on Razr flip phones, the public didn't quite grasp the use of the product. Cue this early product video posted to Noah Glass' Youtube account, featuring Biz Stone:

TechCrunch covered the service, implying that perhaps Odeo should stop creating fun “side projects” and instead focus on their own failing product.

Twttr then had its first surge in popularity in August, gaining thousands of users when people took to the social network to spread the word about an earthquake in San Francisco.

In September 2006, Evan Williams approached the investors of Odeo with an offer. Odeo was going nowhere, that much was obvious. The launch of iTunes with an included podcast platform had all but sounded the death knell for the company, not to mention the fact that the founders realized they didn’t really care about podcasts in the first place.

Williams approached the investors with an offer: To prevent them from taking a loss, he would buy back their shares of the company. In undoubtedly the biggest financial mistake of their lives, the investors agreed.

Odeo, and twttr, now belonged to Williams.

Odeo became Obvious Corp., twttr rebranded itself as Twitter and, in a controversial move, Williams fired Noah Glass, one of Twitter’s earliest champions and who Business Insider called "Twitter’s Forgotten Founder." Some accounts imply that Glass played a role almost as large as Dorsey’s in the creation of Twitter — Glass is credited with the name and much of the early work on the site — even saying that without Glass, Twitter would never have been created.

Potential reasons for Glass’ termination vary, from a volatile personality to overzealous vie for control over Twitter, but Glass admitted in an interview that while he felt “betrayed,” he didn’t leave the company empty-handed. While Glass' severance remains undisclosed, he has said of the matter, “I came away with something. If I’d stayed, if it would have gone the other way, I would have come away with a lot lot more."

Twitter had spun off into its own company by April 2007, with Jack Dorsey as CEO, but it wasn’t until the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference that Twitter really hit the social media map. Two 60-inch plasma screens set up in the conference hallways streamed only Twitter messages, and thousands of tweets silently overtook SXSWi. By the end of the conference, the number of tweets per day had tripled from 20,000 to 60,000.

SXSWi gave Twitter the momentum it needed to grow. And it did grow, exponentially, from 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007, to 100 million tweets per quarter in 2008. In March 2009, Nielsen Online reports indicated that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, numbers impressive enough for even Facebook, which was then getting 65.7 million unique visitors per month, to take notice. Facebook's updated, real-time Homepage seemed like a direct response to Twitter's unprecedented growth.

Twitter's increase in popularity also came with increased scrutiny. Dorsey had stepped down from his CEO position in October 2008 to serve a less intensive role as chairman of the board. Williams had assumed the role of CEO, and reached out to Dick Costolo, another ex-Googler, to act as COO in September 2009, in an attempt to quell the belief that Twitter wouldn’t survive at a huge scale without a business plan. Then Twitter’s growth flatlined unexpectedly in the summer of 2009, while social juggernaut Facebook and YouTube's numbers continued to rise steadily.

Costolo ushered in a new era of revenue growth from a new form of advertising: promoted tweets. Promoted tweets, what Costolo called a hybrid between "earned media" and "paid media," were the first stage of Twitter's advertising platform, revealed at the first official Chirp Conference in San Francisco in April 2010.

The new feature offered a chance at real-time promotion, multiple ways to measure user engagement with a tweet and, for customers, the idea that ads that weren't "resonating" through retweets, clicks or favorites would be dropped from the rotation. Most importantly, Twitter was now making money.

Costolo's success with promoted tweets was an outward indication of his own deep integration with Twitter. In fact, he became so ingrained in the company that the other founders referred to him as a co-founder, despite the fact that he joined the company three years after the first tweet.

Then in 2010, Evan Williams posted on the Twitter blog that he would be stepping down as CEO, choosing to focus instead on the product end of the company. Dick Costolo would take his place. While it was widely agreed that this change would likely mean Costolo and Williams splitting executive duties between the two of them, there was no doubt that Costolo was now behind the wheel.

Dick Costolo Image: Twitter

The change made sense. Twitter had produced a popular product through product-CEO Evan Williams — he had created new features, an updated website design and had helped to build the product from its humble beginnings at Odeo to a social network generating millions of interactions between users per day. But what Twitter really needed in 2010 was a business model, and Dick Costolo had already taken major strides toward securing one.

Promoted tweets were just the beginning. In 2011, Twitter doubled its acquisitions, focusing on search and discovery, social analytics, and advertising. The acquisition of the Tweetie client from Atbits in 2010 also produced official Twitter apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, causing Twitter usage to skyrocket once again. By January 2011, 40% of all tweets were coming from mobile.

Costolo gave Twitter something it hadn't had prior to his appointment as CEO: direction. He focused on Twitter as an information network, rather than just a social network. As rumors started to circulate about a Facebook phone, Costolo shrugged off the idea of a Twitter phone.

"Twitter already works on every device you're going to hear about this week," he said at Mobile World Conference in February 2011. "Tweets flow seamlessly across platforms; that's what we're trying to accomplish."

As Twitter continued to thrive under Costolo with its new found sense of direction, new features emerged, such as photo and video sharing. However, much of the focus was on perfecting the features and revenue streams that Twitter already had. As Twitter continued to acquire smaller startups to improve its existing features, promoted tweets — which had expanded to promoted trends and promoted accounts as well — continued to build impressive revenue. Some reports expect the company to generate more than $1 billion in ad revenue by 2014.

The company also developed a spam problem, which still to this day presents a challenge as the number of spam accounts continues to rise.

Despite these challenges, Twitter achieved a new level of success through journalism. Twitter played a crucial role in the 2012 election, the digital revolution in Egypt that resulted in President Hosni Mubarak to stepping down and confirmed early reports of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Twitter's relationship with the media is equal parts love and hate. Social media sites have become the best way to get the news first (most likely, as events unfold), and nothing does it better than Twitter. The immediacy of its constantly refreshing feed has made it the best source of breaking news, whether it's celebrity gossip or political discord.

While most of Twitter's acquisitions have gone on to enhance Twitter's core features, two startups are noteworthy for expanding on the platform in a unique way.

Vine Image: Vine

First up, Vine. Dick Costolo summed it up pretty well in an interview with The Wall Street Journal shortly after Vine's acquisition: "When Facebook bought Instagram, I said we're not going to do what those other guys did. We're looking for the next thing. We all agreed that this is the next thing down the road."

And Vine has certainly been a success story for Twitter. The versatility of the platform has made it popular with average Joes and major brands alike, cutting news stories, contests, fashion shows and ads down to six-second clips of digestible content, not to mention the wealth of unique, user-generated content that appears on the app every day. Even when Instagram released Instagram Video to compete with the brand, Vine has remained popular among users.

Twitter Music also stemmed from the acquisition of a startup, We Are Hunted, in April 2013. We Are Hunted specialized in following music trends, an interest it shared with Twitter Music. Twitter Music focuses on music discovery in a way that makes it unique from other sites like Pandora and Spotify, by displaying only songs that your friends are tweeting out, so you don't get recommended a song just because your buddy listened to it once. The website is fun to use and gorgeous to look at, and a good sign if it's any indication of products to come.

Twitter continues to shatter user records, bring us the latest news, enrage celebrities and spoil our favorite TV shows.

However, the numbers aren't as impressive as promised. While Twitter is still experiencing a 30% growth since last year, it's far from the projected 100% growth that CEO Costolo projected.

In July, Twitter's newest ad product, called "Twitter Amplify," brought a new method for media brands and advertisers to promote television ads on Twitter. Brands can even track their campaigns with the new TV Ads Dashboard. The product has reportedly earned successes of up to 27% higher than historical average ratings of message association, brand recall and purchase intent for brands such as Jaguar and Samsung.

So on the eve of Twitter's proposed IPO, the biggest question is where the company is headed once it goes public.

First and foremost, Twitter will be looking to add more users. The site is popular, yes, but only among 18% of adults in the United States. When compared to the 50% of U.S. adults on Facebook, that number appears a bit lackluster.

The reason for this is clear: The barrier to entry is greater on Twitter, with its seemingly complicated system of hashtags, @ mentions and specialized lingo. The site's latest attempt at solving part of this problem, the blue lines that connect conversations, have been met with a mostly negative response from users.

Another direction Twitter seems to be taking is social television. As new episodes of Breaking Bad and Orange Is the New Black rock the Twittersphere with users' live tweets, the social network will be looking for a way to harness this natural relationship into revenue through its advertising. Recent startup acquisitions, including social TV analytics pioneer Bluefin Labs, seem to confirm this.

And finally, it's a safe bet that Twitter will continue to perfect its existing services, as the site has consistently done in the past, looking for new ways to improve on the features users love and get rid of the ones they hate. Hey Twitter, if you're looking for some suggestions, we have some for you.

What do you think Twitter should focus on as it moves toward IPO? Let us know in the comments, and don't feel like you have to keep it to 140 characters or less.

Image: iStockPhoto, funkydata

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