I’ve been spending a bit of time this week getting my head around Twitter.
I read somewhere recently that its the fastest growing website at the moment so I wanted to figure out how it works and why it is so popular – and also how it really differs from social networks like Facebook.
And how organisations could make use of it.
Then yesterday I saw that Stephen Fry tweets obsessively. So I decided to follow him. That’s what you do with Twitter. Rather than invite your friends (as in Facebook), you “tweet” (read “post a status update”) and if people choose to, they can simply follow you and see all your posts.
And its true, he does tweet a lot (Stephen, I mean – he feels like a friend now, or am I a stalker??).
Now I’m a huge fan of Facebook, I absolutely love it, but that’s probably because I just love talking to people, making friends with folks from all walks of life, keeping in contact with mates from previous jobs – and I’ve had quite a few of those lately – exchanging laughs, info, links, ideas, generally chatting, learning and sharing both the good times and the bad.
Facebook is a great tool for doing all this stuff – but it requires a bit of effort to upload photos, add links, and do anything beyond status updating to keep your profile pages fresh and interesting. Not that many people bother doing this, of course.
Some people just do status updates, if anything at all.
Ah yes, the famous Status Update. One of the most interesting aspects of it, I think. But the problem with updating your status is that if you do it too often it can feel as if you are dominating the conversation. It does to me, anyway.
Not with Twitter. The more tweets you post the more fun it is. Hourly tweets, even minute by minute (see Stephen Fry’s).
And that’s pretty much it with Twitter. Some call it microblogging, but you can’t – as far as I can tell – do anything around or beyond the “blogging” part. No sharing photos, adding sidebars for links, widgets and so on.
Short and simple – but constant. One to many – but pull rather than push when it comes to reader consumption.
I can see loads of use cases for enterprises when it comes to Twitter. Informing customers of “flash” sales and events (food tasting anyone?), “use within the hour” promotion codes, urgent product recalls, store temporary closures, news flashes, the list is endless.
And if you look at the public timeline you can see loads of examples.
I have now come to love Twitter. I still love Facebook too. So I’ve brought them together but its a one way relationship. My Facebook updates appear in Twitter – but only updates on Facebook appear on Facebook. I don’t want to spam people or crowd the conversation.
Right, I guess its time for my next tweet. See you there!
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