#iranelection, the topic that pumped traffic in Twitter, got back in the charts

Advertising Age breaks the news: According to news-monitoring service VMS, the media coverage Twitter got in the last 30 days worths 48 million dollars. That’s half Microsoft’s Bing.com launch advertising budget. AdAge asks just below the title: Can Twitter maintain its sizzle? I think the right question is: How did that happen? It’s not “the chatter” that worths the money, it’s the Iran topic that ruled the media. And guess what was the main source of information? Twitter

After almost two weeks of Michael Jackson in the top ten most discussed topics on Twitter, #iranelection is back in the chart. This is the main reason Twitter got such a big media coverage. Take a look back and try to remember what was the main source of information regarding this topic in the – more or less – traditional media. Twitter on TV, Twitter in the newspapers, Twitter everywhere.

The advantage of using Twitter as a medium to spread the information is that the microblogging became probably the fastest communication medium in the world. Yes, there’s the phone, which is definetly faster, but it’s pretty expensive and in times of political crisis, not only that it’s not actually the safest way to communicate, but you might actually not be able to use it.

Basically, after the Iran matter, Twitter became a real medium, just like newspapers, but more likely similar to the internet. An internet inside the internet. It’s actually interesting to analyze how Twitter changed the perception people have over news. It’s 140 characters easy to get the news and it’s millions of 140 characters news to be read.

Of course, Twitter will not replace the true media forms, like newspapers, television or websites. But it can be translated into a reasonable source for whatever information you might want to expand. It’s brilliant, actually. Too bad it’s too hard for the company to actually get payed.

Now let’s see some figures:

1. Twitter had 2,7 billion impressions in the last 30 days
2. PR value generated by TV – 57%
3. PR value generated by newspapers – 37%
4. PR value generated by magazines – 5%
5. $48 million dollars worth media exposure