Twitter? November 21, 2008
Posted by onprocess in Customer Understanding Research, OnProcess.Tags: Twitter, Twitter for business
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Being a marketing professional who lived through the dot-com boom and bust, I have developed a healthy skepticism for the ‘next big thing’ in internet-technology-related marketing. After all, it was just eight or nine years ago that my colleagues were telling me that brick-and-mortar stores were “dinosaurs” and “going away”. Well, they may be going away, but not because they’ve been replaced by the Internet.
But that’s a story for another day.
Lately, it’s been all about Twitter. Maybe you know about it. I’m guessing for our audience, anyway, that you may have heard of it, but you don’t really know what it is, and don’t use it yourself. That’s ok. It doesn’t mean you’re a Luddite.
What it more likely means is that you’re not a 20 – 35-ish person in the marketing or PR fields. Because, from my observations, that’s the core user group for this real-time blurb technology, with the exception of a few outliers (perhaps peer-pressured into making sure they don’t miss the boat, in case it actually sails). But lately, there seems to have been a concerted effort on some people’s part to push the business potential of Twitter. Consider these quotes from Twitter in the press:
The New York Times calls Twitter “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” TIME Magazine says, “Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app,” and Newsweek noted that “Suddenly, it seems as though all the world’s a-twitter.”
I’m not sure I see it.
I mean, who’s got time for all the 140-character or less navel-gazings and semi-considered opinions of dozens, if not hundreds of people?
Of course, a lot of its potential for business may depend on who your target audience is. If it’s 20-35-ish people in the marketing and PR fields, you may be on to something. But for our audiences, who are generally C-level or VP-level execs of some pretty substantial companies, perhaps not so much.
So I’m throwing this out there. Anyone in our readership (such as it is so far…) think Twitter is good for business? Got any success stories? Let me know.
Here in the comments.
Or @SteveOnProcess. Just covering all contingencies, you understand…
–sk
Twitter is a very effective site for specific purposes. It usually allows individuals to provide a minute-by-minute update on their life or business, and gives them immediate access to thousands of other people’s thoughts.
Someone like Tony Hirsch, CEO Zappos.com, can reach 21,000+ people with one simple message. Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg.com, reaches over 76,000 people with one message. These two men are able to influence entire markets 140 characters at a time, and what business owner or CEO doesn’t want to influence an entire market?
Twitter is already a very big deal to consumers, but you won’t find many great B2B case examples at this point. If and when they happen they’re likely to grow organically. (“Whoa — and that new marketing idea is perfect for Twitter” rather than “We’ve gotta get on Twitter ASAP cuz it’s the Next Big Thing.”)
Zach: I do think Twitter is important stuff (see Comment #2), but “reach” is an ambiguous term. I have lots of followers on Twitter, but I have no way of knowing how many I actually “reach” with each Tweet.
I’m testing two different Twitter profiles. This is something that’s not getting much play either. Some of us who are involved with multiple businesses or enterprises may have a need for multiple twitter profiles. This can create further Twitter overload.
I think Twitter has some legitimate business uses and should not be ignored, but most folks use it to share useless information such as; just popped in a movie, getting on the plane, just saw a three legged dog running down the road, etc.
At the end of the day Twitter’s survival and value will be it’s ability to monetize and scale. How often have you seen the whale notifying that the system is overloaded? How does Twitter intend to monetize its traffic? I’m not sure I’ve heard one viable idea.
Glad to be part of the conversation