Yesterday at the Web 2.0 Expo, I was asked to step in for an impromptu Social Media Town Hall session, with Janetti Chon and Jeremiah Owyang. The idea was to follow up on our previous morning's "Why Social Media Fails" discussion.
We also wanted to make sure that we engaged with the audience as a community, so opened for discussion immediately. We used the hashtag #smth to track everyone's thoughts. If you look at the stream, it's clear that we had healthy differences of opinion in the room.
One part of the session has stuck with me since the afternoon, related to sponsored conversations and business models:
- I asked for a show of hands, how many people use Twitter. Almost everyone.
- I asked how many people would be willing to pay for a personal account, perhaps $49 for a richer feature set like Flickr Pro. Almost no one.
- I asked how many people would be willing to pay for a corporate account so their brand could participate. About 2/3rds of the room.
What do you think about that?
