BUSINESSWEEK, COMCAST, ZAPPOS -- TWITTER... WHO AM I TO MISS THE BOAT?

Submitted by Terri Griffith on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 17:54

I've completed my due diligence on Twitter, but why should you care? Possibly because I'm a bit like you: I'm not really an earlier adopter; I have too much to do already; I am willing to try things out, but they need to make my job or life easier. In the case of Twitter, I've been interested in possible organizational uses. The following describes how I came to the conclusion that Twitter can have value for me.  Hopefully this assessment will save you time and provide a valuable idea or two. Steps I took in my due diligence:

• Twice I've done posts (Twitter & Zappos, Microblogging at Work) focused on Twitter, pushing myself to come to understand what just seemed like group "texting."
• I've mentioned Twitter in a variety of other posts - largely where I've been thinking out loud about how Twitter might have value to teams and/or whole organizations.
  • iStanford
  • Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
  • Web 2.0 Firefighting
  • Team Omnipresence
• Read "twitter means business" by @jojeda (aka Julio Ojeda-Zapatta).
• Read the BusinessWeek article on how Comcast is supporting their customers with Twitter -- great article, puts a human face on the process, ironically.
• I "followed" Shel Israel via Twitter for a couple of days. His list of global companies using Twitter to reach out, listen in, train, and the like is a great window into company use. (I stopped following Shel just because he posts a bit too often for my narrow use - I'll read his blog instead.)
• I've checked into a variety of sites talking about "Best Uses of Twitter"
• And finally, I've been reading Twitter-focused blogs, like Twitterati, and have found interesting deep-value uses of Twitter.  For example, today Scott Gilbertson writes in Wired, "Twitter, Yahoo Boss Mashup Yields Impressive News Search Engine" describing how Yahoo is using Twitter feeds to improve search results.

My use of Twitter (at least as I'm planning today -- I too practice STOP -- LOOK -- LISTEN) is to stick with the idea of a microblog. That is, I see Twitter as providing me a chance to interact with a larger audience than my essay style blogs may. Twitter may also turn out to be more conversational, rather than unidirectional -- most of my posts don't instigate a flurry of replies. I see that Twitter can provide great customer support, an excellent way to organize your friends for dinner, and an interesting way to interact during conference presentations, but I don't see my main use going in those directions. I remain intrigued by how teams might use Twitter to support situational awareness for team work. Applications such as Splitweet enable you to manage multiple Twitter accounts, so team "tweeting" doesn't have to take over your more personal tweets. Interestingly, the .com domain names: teamtwitter, tweetteam, twitterteam, teamtweet and teamtwit are all taken (same for "group").  Please comment below with any examples of team tweeting. Thanks in advance -- or follow me via the new button to the right and we can tweet about it. FYI:Still looking for recent articles on the sociology of why we are willing to be monitored (let people know what we are doing and where we are, a la iStanford) -- and even to contribute to it. Peer-reviewed publication is way behind reality on this one, and a few other important topics...