Twitter has been regularly featured on a number of television shows for some time now (I’ve always found CNN’s anchors to be a bit too enamored of the service), but this looks like the first time it’s been featured prominently in a commercial. As Biz Stone writes in the Twitter blog Sprint has just released a new ad called “What’s Happening”, during which an announcer spouts off a number of totally made-up statistics describing how people are using the Sprint network.
Nestled in the middle of the ad, the commercial’s speaker states “233,000 people just Twittered on Twitter. 26% of you viewing this have no idea what that means” as a few dozen 3D blue Twitter birds fly around. I think the 26% figure is on the low side (many people who hear about Twitter every day still have no idea what it really means, and some people who have actually used the service still don’t really get it). But those 3D birds sure look cool.
Oh, and that phone shown at the end? That’s a Palm Pre.
Unfortunately Twitter doesn’t seem to be coping too well with its growth at the moment. The service was well known for its shoddy performance during the first half of 2008, but it has become quite stable since then (coping admirably with such large events as the Election). But in the last two days it has been reverting to its old ways – yesterday users noticed as they lost avatars and messages, which brought the service down for about an hour. This morning more issues are popping up with delayed tweets and errors. This is one of the first times that Twitter has really faced extended issues since it really started approaching the mainstream.
26%? Probabably even 62% is at the high end.
At any rate, the twitter PR machine is really nothing short of astonishing.
Instead of trying to buy twitter, facebook should try to buy twitter’s pr agency.
I think that ad by Sprint is brilliant.
Loads better than those horrible “Papa Sprint” commercials.
Great work.
I totally agree, they must be using a different ad firm because this looks very smart.
Cool commercial. Mmm, Palm Pre. 4G baby.
The video was pulled a few times yesterday on YouTube so if it stops working just do a search for “Sprint What’s Happening”.
Why would someone pull an ad?
Isn’t the point that people watch it?
4g doesn’t exist yet, baby.
yes it does. at least it does in portland where i’m at, baby.
Hopefully this means Palm/Sprint are close to a release date for the Pre.
Hopefully they just mention what you can do with Pre instead of comparing it against the iPhone with disastrous results (like the Instinct).
Either way, I do love how the subtly introduce the Pre here. And that is coming from an iPhone lover.
That seems to be what they’re doing, and letting blogs draw the comparisons for them:
http://www.appl...imitations.html
After signing up for FriendFeed yesterday and checking out their new beta, I see little use in the unstable and barely searchable Twitter.
How so? Most of friendfeeds posts come from twitter.
Sssh, don’t try and confuse the man with logic.
I know they’re loosing Market Share as this video runs
But their ads sure are Sweet
Where is the justice?
Well… Sprint mentions Twitter briefly in an ad, but I guess that’s kind of the same thing…
Very nice ad
I watched this add during 24 last night for the first time…as Twitter was undergoing maintenance.
I thought it was funny that “2033 people have just Twittered”…wrong no one was Twittering at that moment! hehe
Cute birds for sure, but what I enjoyed most was the self obsessed proclamations they were all making… Me, me, me…
I think that truely represents the nature of the twitter community, tc included.
“I enjoyed most was self obsessed proclamations they were all making… Me, me, me…”
haha i caught that too, love it! “me me me me me”
The race doesn’t always go to the swift. 4G, in this case.
I think a more telling statement is that less than 26% of the people here probably knew that Twitter was featured in a Sprint TV ad and had to learn about it here for the first time.
Ahhh Fail Whales galore, missing avatars, disappearing tweets… it’s almost like the good ol’ days of January 2008!! But Britney Spears is still on Twitter, so it will never be the same.
Love the commercial. Especially the part where all the Twitterbirds are saying “Me! Me! Me!”
Let’s hope the Pre lives up to the hype – wonder if they’ve got their own version of the Fail Whale yet?
The thing frustrating with Twitter is that they were going for a hiring blitz to get more developers to build up more robust, but even after getting funding, they put all their hiring on hold recently… more work for the same group of people, i feel sorry for them!
Twitter’s hiring is not on hold. There are still interviews happening and people coming in for interviews.
Check our job site and you’ll see that there are a number of openings available.
Cool exposure for Twitter and a great advertisement for Sprint.
Almost as good as Apple. For a long time – and still up to this day – Hollywood used an Apple notebook for a character if they want to portray that person as hip, in-style, dynamic, fun etc.
Soon they’ll amp it up by showing the movie peeps using twitter on their Apple notebook.
It’s the ultimate sign of a company crossing the chasm.
Congrats to the twitter team!
Now back to removing the whale
unfortunately Twitter isn’t quite as cool nor nor is it going to last long enough to represent what you seem to feel Apple does. Twitter will die a fairly fast death after everyone gets over the thing and moves on with their life. Besides, if Twitter is so good for getting information out there and interacting, why are you posting here and not there?
because only 140 characters fit over there.
I wonder when they plan to make some revenue, Can’t stop hearing about them..
New folks causing the crush? Thar, the Fail Whale blows! (boy, *does* it) – and what’s his friend, I’ve never seen before. The Maintenance Mallard?
Saw this commercial last night during 24.
I saw the blue birds and instantly knew they were going to mention Twitter.
That’s pretty good brand recognition considering that stylized bird isn’t even a part of their official branding (unlike beautiful Fail Whale).
Twitter next-gen logo?
Excellent publicity, interesting and very good graphics. Saludos desde Argentina
“I’ve always found CNN’s anchors to be a bit too enamored of the service”
Twitter gives you a snapshot of what everyone is thinking at a point in time, it’s the closest think there is to a global mind reading machine
that’s incredibly valuable to media companies, it’s in there long term interest to push it.
Techcrunch Blogger: “I’ve always found CNN’s anchors to be a bit too enamored of the service”
priceless…http://tinyurl.com/y6xo54
Pff. Cmon. Twitter is filled to the brim with idiots basically saying “Me! Me! Me!”
Just read Twinkle on your iPhone and you will see what im talking about. Stupid nonsense about their mundane and pointless lives.
If news outlets are gauging what people are talking about based on Twitter, Mainstream media is far along the death spiral than I thought.
Finally someone here with a brain and and unwillingness to suck on the corporate tit.
I am so sick of people singing the praises of twitter. Someone please tell me in as many words as you feel necessary why twitter is useful to our society.
Don’t worry about it. We don’t want you on Twitter, and you sound like a boring follow anyway. the rest of us will reap the benefits of what it provides.
YER BLOCKED.
LOL
yerblock is a turdblock
twitter into deadpool
Great publicity for Twitter but, they’re now down in the wake of it. Are they about to become the next Friendster?
Nice!
Come on 4G. I wanna see it NOW!
~Ronald
TrueBeliever & HopeDealer
Great early pub for the Pre.
that is a really cool commercial.
Brilliant ad, but it really only appeals to smart people
so by your estimation intelligence or “smarts” can be defined as someone who knows what the following are:
- twitter
- 4G
- a plane landing
- texting about diapers whilst in a meeting
- being able to relate to forgetting your phone in a cab after using the internet on it.
- uploading a video to you tube from your phone.
Or perhaps you are suggesting that one who spends their life caring about technology makes them smart. Who knows. What I do know is that comments like that are why services like twitter are useless wastes of time. No one cares what your inarticulate ass cares on this or any other subject. Well I guess technically I do because I responded. how ironic eh?
The real smart people are aware that someone is analyzing text messages and tweets while planning to make a fortune.
Text message to wife while browsing the web: “Working late. I might get a pizza.”
Result: All Google ad units change to local pizza chain promotions.
There’s a lot of money to be made knitting this realtime data together.
Fail Whale says, “I’mmm baaaack!” {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/OM6YGo1xZh_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Fail Whale says, “I’mmm baaaack!” ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/4DhRI74RYB”}}}
Here’s a related comment on Twitter’s affection for a large blue mammal: http://bbltwt.com/vehvg
Sorry, the link above won’t work on this site. If you want to see this comment, copy the link and paste it into your browser. I think it’s worth it
Or … try the link in the website. That might work.
Nice to know they’re mining all the SMS, email conversations, and web searches for “research”.
Funny how everything is turned into even more fre twitter pr.
I’d be cool to mention that finally sprint got a decent PR agency. Those black and white ads with their CEO were not appealing at all, if anything so full of ego having that guy on every commercial. Wonder if they were trying to get the older crowd back then.
“Sprint has just released a new ad called “What’s Happening”, during which an announcer spouts off a number of totally made-up statistics describing how people are using the Sprint network.”
They may be made up, however, they are no where near the false advertising claims… “the fastest 3G network”, made by At&t and Apple.
At least they didn’t point out that 96% of those tweets are spam or phishing attacks.
It’s great that Twitter is getting major exposure. But I was more interested from that commercial about the reality it shows. Information moves so fast in this world. It’s crazy
Free?
Maybe free for twitter, but let’s face it Sprint isn’t trying to do anything for free. They want to advertise it so people buy bigger text msg’ing plans to use twitter.
For Sprint it’s all about making money (and rightly so)
Of course what’s really scary is Sprint is analyzing everything you do …
Their knowing the content of the message left me with a bad Big Brother feeling.
Great TV ad!!!
as if twitter needed more exposure. I thought the ad was really clever though. When I first saw it I wondered the entire time “WHO IS THIS FOR!?!?! THIS IS NEAT!!!” learning motion design right now. so…
A bit surprised no one has done some backward math engineering on the number of tweets given in the ad. If they have, I missed it.
Tweets during ad = 233,267
Ad = 1 minute
Minutes per day = 1440
Tweets per day = 233,267 * 1440 = 335,904,480
If the average user tweets…
20 tweets per day = about 16,795,224 accounts
25 tweets per day = about 13,436,179 accounts
30 tweets per day = about 11,196,816 accounts
Does anyone know what the average number of tweets per day is across all accounts?
What are your thoughts on this?