February 12th, 2009

Twitter Here, There & Everywhere

Twitter suddenly seems all over the news. It’s come a long way from the micro-blogging service whose attraction many of us wondered about not long ago — who cared what your friend/colleague/sister was eating at her office cafeteria now?

There are at least a couple of good reasons for that.

First, Twitter allows communicating online to potentially large audiences easier than ever before (or forces it to be easier, depending upon your perspective). That’s because no special technical skills are required to post to your Twitter page, just like none are required for more typical blog services. But, unlike other blogs, you have only 140 characters to communicate.

While I understand the premise for the quote “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter,” attributable to Mark Twain or Blaise Pascal, depending on your source, I have not found it attributable to Twitter. Instead, Twitter has given me and millions of others permission to post snippets of information, rather than paragraphs, without looking less professional or knowledgeable (necessarily). This means I can share almost anything, including links to valuable information online, a lot more quickly than if I felt I had to elaborate with my own brilliant spin on that information, or risk being seen as dull or less informed.

Second, organizations are figuring out how to make Twitter a useful tool for such things as marketing, collaboration and customer service. Not bad for a free tool. For example, Airlines have found some of their customers like flight updates via Twitter (which can be received by mobile text). And Dell attributed over $1 million in sales due to specials announced on Twitter last December.

So, expect to see and hear more about Twitter as the year progresses. Try it out and think about ways you and your organization may be able to put it to use. Please visit my Twitter profile and join me there for lots of other great tips and information!