For those of you who aren’t already familiar, in a few short months, Twitter has gone from a site used by a small circle of people constantly flooding the world with useless information about their day to a prime communications and information sharing tool. Or, as our friend Mark might put it, the conversation has become broader and deeper, more nuanced in a way that it’s hard to believe we’re doing it with less than 140 characters at a time.
So now, it’s being used for everything from telling everyone about your experiences in the here and now, to letting people know there is new stuff out there (we’re even doing it with our blog @W5Insight. It’s also been used in recent months to express group outrage with a viral advertising campaign.
While some of the biggest signs that the conversation is becoming more nuanced include the recent explosion of Twitter applications from seeing what others tweeting via the Twitter Grader and Twitturly to expanded content sharing through websites such as Twitpic, and the fact that everyone from CNN Anchors like @Rich Sanchez to mainstream corporations like @SouthwestAir are using it; the biggest sign of Twitter’s acceptance might be found in it’s recent Phishing incidents. Also interesting is how breaking news has a way of hitting Twitter minutes before it ever hits mainstream news feeds or even live television
While using Twitter might not make you more profitable if you’re a company or change your life as an individual, it’s become a conversation the rest of the group is having. On the day of the inauguration, follow some of the live updates for a prime example of the undercurrent.
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January 20, 2009 at 3:32 pm
james Dowd
The amazing thing about Twitter from where I sit these days, is its lack of formal organization. I think a lot of the reticence I see to companies getting involved in Twitter is the same as the fear they have had about blogging and even the net, initially: “Who’s running this show? Who controls my message out there?” The answer is “nobody” and “the truth.” You have to actually be willing to let the customers behind the curtain and see how the sausage is made.
The problem is that there are a lot of very smart people out there who will call you on your shortcomings. But the benefit is that there are a lot of very smart people out there who will give you invaluable information and opinions for free. When we launched HelpGuest we got hundreds of pages of feedback. People don’t expect things to be perfect, what they expect is to be let in on the conversation. This scares a lot of companies to death (it was even hard for us, and we’re as “new model” as we can be).
But it’s the same as market research, really. Take down that two way window in the focus group room and have a conversation.
February 10, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Beware of Free Social Media Advice « A blog about the art and the science of marketing research.
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