27 December 2010

Twitter is Valuable???

Over the past few months my team has been experimenting with Twitter to see if there is something in there of value.

I dislike the nature of the type of 'conversation' that goes via Twitter. Personally I think it is rather unsocial form of media. I find it hard to describe the tool as a form of communication. But it seems that what I think and what some of the rest of the world thinks are rather different.

However along the way I have learned some interesting facts about the service and what it can do as a marketing vehicle.

Let me share a couple of them with you.

Twitter marketing is a real concept. There are a wide number of Tweet based interactions possible. I remain skeptical particularly in having the direct 1:1 communication that has been used to demonstrate its power. However since Google started indexing Tweets and since Bots started pulling tweets into consideration for search results I am more comfortable with it.

One of the key values of Tweets vs Emails is the difference in the capability of access. Emails have become more spam than just about anything else. each and probably everyone of us spends a certain part of our day eliminating SPAM. But so far the direct spam in Twitter is eliminated by only having to look at the results from particular results in a tool such as Tweetdeck. How long that survives remains to be seen

Now the down side. There is complete drivel out there in Tweetland. The shortened message size means that the capability of the user to comprehend exactly what is being communicated in less than 140 characters is just a tough concept to understand.


In my view using Twitter for knowledge acquisition is a mistake. Using it for customer services is at best marginal. But in promotion as a viable tool in place of emaill - there is some glimmer of a view here.

Stay tuned

Cheers

1 comment:

Dennis Schaal said...

Professor Sabena: Twitter is much more than being about 140 characters as a learning tool. It is about the links and content that people tweet. Regardless, you'd be surprised what can be communicated in 140 characters. It's time for you to come and play:)