Such Sweet Sorrow in the Digital Age

In plays, audiences view the characters as separate from themselves. In Shakespeare’s plays, the characters are often separated from each other by circumstances, as in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare also appears distant to current audiences by the separation of time. In a difficult economy, how to attract audiences by a distant drama? The Royal Shakespeare Company bridges the chasm between characters and audience by the tweeting of its characters in its current production of Romeo and Juliet. http://www.suchtweetsorrow.com/

The tweets of Romeo, Juliet and other personages propel them into the space and time of audiences today. The fact that they tweet contemporizes the brands of Shakespeare and the Royal Shakespeare Company. It demonstrates that the RSC knows social media, which should increase ticket sales to younger audiences. Other theater companies could take advantage of social media as an opportunity to use real time to revivify the unreal time of their productions. Imagine the tweets of Ranevskaya and Varya in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Audiences could learn that drama applies to their lives, no matter the era. They may even read Romeo and Juliet.

How Twitter Could Become Profitable

What's in a tweet? A $1 billion valuation of Twitter (Financial Times, September 25, 2009 http://tinyurl.com/yzye8tb), a company which is not yet profitable. The company is not managing itself to become profitable, nor managing its brand to control its image and build its brand. Twitter's business is content management. The company needs to emphasize its knowledge of content management and social media, which could be done through conferences, partnerships and a social media agency. Then it could become profitable.

Due to the novelty of social media, many in the advertising industry are unfamiliar with how to utilize social media for their clients and in advertising campaigns. Thus they seek advice from others in the industry by asking questions and attending conferences. Twitter could utilize its brand to organize paid conferences at which some of its successful users could speak, and teach marketers what they know about social media.

Twitter could streamline its applications and partnerships. The many Twitter applications, with Twitter or tweet in the title, dilute the brand, since the consumer does not know which are authorized by Twitter. The company could partner with one of the popular applications for disseminating content, for example, TweetDeck. Twitter would recognize TweetDeck as its official content management tool. In exchange, it could partner with TweetDeck to receive a percentage of TweetDeck's advertising revenue.

To become profitable, Twitter could start a social media agency business and manage companies' content for marketing, since it already manages content for companies and individuals. This business would build on its current operations by adding a revenue component. It is a natural extension of its business which would also strengthen its brand.

Conferences, partnerships and a social media agency: possibilities for Twitter to make its tweets financially viable.