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Do you Twitter yet? Do you even know why you should? Do you know what Twitter is?
What is Twitter? According to the Twitter website, ” Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” . Twitter lets you send 140 character messages that are visible to anyone and the messages can be sent via the web, IM, cell phone SMS text messaging and the Twitter API. Twittering is also referred to as micro-blogging – and most Twits are easier to read and scan because of the 140 character limitation.
Twitter is definitely moving into the mainstream as evidenced by these two recent quotes:
- “Twitter is one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet” – New York Times
- ‘Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app” – TIME Magazine
Common Craft put together this short video to explain Twitter:
Why do I care? Sure, people share some mundane things in their life, but the real value of Twitter is gathering a group of people you follow and learning from them. I use Twitter to find great blog posts and other resources that I may have otherwise missed. Many astute companies are now using Twitter from a marketing perspective to listen to what their customers are saying and to promote blog posts, news articles and press releases. For example, CIO.com is active in Twitter as well as the Editor-in-Chief, Abbie Lundberg, and editor/writer Esther Schindler. People have even ‘twittered’ about iRise and there is even a website called Tweetscan where you can search on companies, people and other phrases.
Twitter Resources Here are some other essential Twitter links to check out:
- Twitter Guide by Caroline Middlebrook
- Advanced Twittering by Jim Storer of Mzinga
- Twitter 101 presentation by Dustin Jacobsen
- Twitter Resources in the EKIVE blog
- Twitter Resource Roundup from the ext337 blog
- A Talk with the Twitter Guys – Shel Israel interviews the Twitter founders
- Twitter Pack – see who you should follow sorted by company, topic, geography, industry and profession. For example, there is a list of the key Usability/UX professionals who Twitter.
It does take some upfront investment of time to get started with Twitter and you have to find the right set of people to follow who are not going to waste your time. Here is a copy of my Twitter feed so you can visualize the value for yourself. Scroll down and see who I’m following. You can click on a user name to access a person’s profile on Twitter and start following them.
You can find me on Twitter at @tomhumbarger. I look forward to seeing you in the “twittersphere”.
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Barry Libert, CEO of Shared Insights, kicked off the final day of the Fusion User conference with a presentation titled “Putting the Power of ‘We’ into Your Career and Your Business”. All participants also received a copy of a new book called We Are Smarter Than Me
Listen to Barry’s entire presentation at the iRise conference (Time: 44 minutes).
Before Barry could get started, 3 members from Stomp worked up and woke up the crowd with a couple minutes of vigorous drumming on buckets and other assorted implements.
Barry’s overall message is that building community works and emotive feelings are coming to business. For example, 36% of American adults use Wikipedia but nobody uses Encyclopedia Brittanica anymore, 85.9 million people blog, there are more podcasters than radio stations and more than 250 million pieces of tagged social media. There are now more than 35 million Facebookers and it is growing at more than 65,000 members per week.
Experts agree, WE is cool. Gartner says that community development is the single most critical success faction in the enterprise. Another analyst say that enterprise social software will be the biggest new workplace technology
Business are communitizing – why? Customers know better than companies what is important; customers are experts, they understand the products and their requirements; and customers are a crowd committed to your success.
Businesses are communitizing in many different areas, including customer service, market research, employee training, and product innovation.
We can Innovate
Example, Dell Idea Storm is outsourcing product innovation to their customers.
We can Service Ourselves
Example, user forums help others solve problems.
We can Sell Products
Example, eBay. More people make their business on eBay than work at Wall-Mart. The bottom line is that everyone who could be your customer could be your sales person
We can Finance You
Example, Prosper.com. We can ’show you the money’ all in the spirit of community transparency just like the old-fashioned ‘community’ bank by matching savers with borrowers.
We can Simulate Us
Example, Catalyze which is ‘Facebook’ for your business analysts and usability professionals. We are all a community of WE. Community will be important to insure the success of you, your group, your team, your boss and your company.
Leaders are becoming We Companies
Example, the Person of the year for Time Magazine last year was “us” or “we”. Community is not just true for kids, students – but for companies.
Did you know, we can Write a book too. For example, in writing the We Are Smarter Than Me book, there were more than 4500 contributors, 750 discussion forums, 100 bloggers and 50 podcasts.
Barry left us with 7 rules for We Success:
- think big, start small
- its not about the tools
- form a club of like-minded people
- communities require moderation (not self-service portals)
- give up control – communities don’t like it when you take control, if you abuse them even once, they will make their voices known
- don’t forget the content (content is king, queen and every other member of the royal content; content will include blogs, discussions, podcasts, resources and webcasts)
- good community takes time – community is built on relationships not on transactions
Welcome to the World of We – it’s happening faster than anyone imagined.
A PDF of his presentation can be found here.
[Barry Libert can also be contacted at blibert@sharedinsights.com or 1-781-995-4709.]
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