Twitter for business, defined for those who don’t get it
Twitter, it is one of those “web 2.0” phenomenon that’s got everyone excited, even those who don’t really understand it. Many of my clients and colleagues have come to me and simply put, say “I don’t get it”. It is really a question more than a statement – they’ve heard something that makes them think they should know what Twitter is about; but everything inside of them is telling them it is irrelevant. So, what is Twitter? Is it relevant to business and why don’t people get it?
Twitter is when a single phone call isn’t practical to communicate with large groups of people and an e-mail is over-kill. Twitter is having a loud-speaker connected to all of your connections (wanting to be tapped into your loud-speaker) at any given moment to convey your message. Twitter at its essence is an extremely powerful communication tool when placed into the right context.
What makes Twitter so powerful is that its level of engagement and social context is dictated by the specific user and their relationship with their user group. What really gets most people hung-up on Twitter and its value, in my opinion, is that most of its function (hence, existence) is a result of lack of basic functionality missing from communication tools already in-use within our market place. If our instant messaging clients let us create groups and send one IM that hit the entire group – that would be like Twitter. If cell phone providers let us group our phonebook contacts and send an SMS to that group – that would be like Twitter. However, someone came along and did something similar to both of these things and that actually is Twitter.
Twitter is a communication tool; any tool that lets you communicate more frequently through a variety of devices from any location can be leveraged as a powerful business asset. Imagine a tool in which you can communicate with members of a team about a specific project and constantly know the status of that project from each member of that team. Now imagine being anywhere at anytime and doing that same thing. A single twitter has the ability to deliver a message to many groups of users at a very quick pace.
The last thing to note about Twitter is that it is a new communication outlet and thus does not come with predisposed etiquette. We all know that person who fills our inbox with junk or leaves unbearably long voice-mails – but Twitter etiquette is defined by the user and their relationship with their user group. You can be as annoying or informative as you please – Twitters (or Tweets) are opt-in. You decide to receive these communications; unlike e-mail, IM, SMS and phone calls which are directed towards you and you receive regardless of your desire (you can opt to ignore, but even that can be annoying).
Again, Twitter at its essence is a communication tool – how that communication is leveraged and utilized is dictated by you, the user. Whether you’re a project development team, a connected group of colleagues or even just a group of friends – Twitter is what you and your group ultimately make of it.
- September 19th, 2007
- 15comments
- I am a proud member of the 9rules network
Nice article! It’s a great explaination for the whole ‘point’ of Twitter. I placed a link to your article on my blog, at Webify.Us
Thank you! I appreciate the comment an link.
Clive Thomson’s recent article in Wired (sorry…don’t have time to search for link) made it all click into place for me.
He described it as giving him a sixth sense as to what his friends were all up to, without trying. He described meeting up with someone for the first time in a month and already knowing that they were working hard on a project and had a new roommate.
It’s the drip..drip…drip of info we used to get by bumping into people, now that we don’t bump into people.
@Phil, thanks for the comment — however my one issue, and motivation for the article, is the focus on “friends”. While Twitter’s initial concept from inception was focused on friends by its earlier adopters, that focus will keep you from seeing its business potential as a communication outlet.
There is a fundamental reason Twitter contacts are followers and following and not “friends” — as I said, the context of the environment is for the user to define. As soon as you start seeing Twitter as “a place for friends” you start to lose focus on its business potential.
For those of you now wondering, my panel went pretty well! Martin would know that already though because I twittered it.
You have to love Twitter!
Thanks, I was wondering what it was myself.
Twitter and websites similar to it are the next generation (current, rather) of social marketing for businesses. They allow us to quickly and easily plug content, websites, and products.
How does Twitter let you organize people into groups?
There is no way, that I’m aware of, to send an update to your coworkers and not your other friends on Twitter.
Save for the single friends-only privacy option, Twitter does not discriminate.
You send that “OK, I have uploaded the latest spreadsheet” message to all your friends or none of them (or the whole world).
IMHO, Twitter is the wrong tool for that particular job.
@Joe, there are hundreds of groups on twitter. TechCrunch40 has a group, RefreshDC has a group, hell … even CNET news has a group.
However, my particular point is that twitter is whatever you make of it. The group that follows you is your personal group — otherwise you are just talking to yourself.
Again, you are thinking about it incorrectly (for the context of this conversation). You are trying to conceptualize twitter for business within the context of how you are using it today — I assume this to be true because you reference the word “friends”. Forget about how you use Twitter and how your buddies use Twitter. Now, introduce Twitter to a business setting for the first time — where all of your followers and followings are related to that context (your business). Twitter is not for friends, Twitter is not for business — Twitter is whatever you and your connected group make of it.
Thanks for the article, I was one of those “I don’t get it” people myself. Twitter seemed cool from the few times I glanced at it, but I didn’t totally grasp the concept of it. This has cleared it up a bit ;-)
@Emily, glad the article could help a bit — are you on Twitter now? For anyone who cares, I am @mringlein on Twitter.
Very interesting… as always! Cheers from -Switzerland-.
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
@Idetroce –> that is great, but why?