It seems at the moment you can’t open a newspaper or turn on the radio without hearing about Twitter – so I thought if you can’t beat ‘em. Here in the office we’ve been trying to figure it out as well for a couple of weeks now. I think we fall into two broad camps, one just can’t figure out what it is all about at all, the other, albeit a much smaller group, and the one that I am in, is intent on trying to understand more about it and its potential business applications.
Hearing about what Wossy is getting up to or hearing about Stephen Fry stuck in a lift is of course one thing, however what I was interested in last week was how Fresh & Easy the US grocery chain owned by Tesco was using Twitter to communicate to its customers promotional offers, recipe ideas or new store openings.
However what is also interesting is that despite 4.4 million users, of which 220,000 are in the UK alone it seems as though the founders have not got a clear idea about how they will actually make any money – not the first time we’ve heard this about an internet start up. This means they are now thinking about charging brands to use Twitter, so I’m fascinated to see how this develops since I’m sure there is a way to harness this technology for our own particular business use
The other thing I’d really like to know though is how Twitter researched before launch, if indeed it ever went into research at all, my guess would be they skipped that bit in the business plan. Apparently the fastest growing demographic group are the 35-44 year olds – I wonder if this was predicted. And did anyone foresee its application for political candidates to ‘tweet’ tens of thousands of voters? As I say I have to believe there are some interesting applications but maybe ones we have yet to invent.
I guess it doesn’t need a particularly powerful crystal ball to predict that we will see a degree of convergence and /or consolidation in what are defined as these social networking services. If I’m regularly going to check Facebook, get off my latest ‘tweet’, log into LinkedIn to see what my professional network are up to, check my office emails, and also those who I prefer to contact via my personal email account it figures that whether in the office or at home the whole process becomes a bit of a chore and doesn’t allow much time for…living!
February 17, 2009 at 9:49 am |
Whilst on the subject of social networking I understand that Waitrose are to build that own site Mywaitrose.com, with an aim to get 6,000 to 10,000 customers signed up by April. The aim is to give customers information about monthly special offers, recipe ideas, and to allow feedback on both new and existing products. One to look out for.