Just over a month ago, Twitter announced Fabric, a toolkit for developers to build applications on top of the Twitter platform. If you’re wondering what developers are actually doing with it, well, Twitter just published a blog post with one success story.
The product in question is MixChannel, an app created by Japanese social media company Donuts. MixChannel allows users to create “couples videos,” like this one — they’re basically 10-second highlight reels for a relationship. (To be honest, I’m not exactly eager to see these kinds of those videos in my Twitter feed, but I’m not really the target audience. Also I’m going to die alone.)
So apparently the Donuts/MixChannel team used Fabric to allow users to sign in with their Twitter credentials, connect with their Twitter followers, and then share their videos (as playable videos, not just links) on Twitter itself. Then it promoted the app with Twitter ads, driving 20,000 installs a day at a cost of less than $1 per install. It also used Twitter’s Tailored Audiences capabilities to target ads at users who had installed the app but hadn’t used it recently.
Product manager Makoto Fukuyama told me (via email and through a translator):
What surprised me most about Twitter Ads was the viral effect that resulted from retweets. The additional reach we received from retweets not only contributed to new client acquisition, but also helped to increase awareness among existing users. In the case of MixChannel, we saw the number of conversions double when we used a call to action that instructed users to retweet. In addition, we also found that combining Tailored Audiences with mobile app promotion was effective in helping us drive app re-engagements.
The end result, according to Twitter and MixChannel, is an app with 2.3 billion video plays each month. You can read more in the case study.