Tweeting about twitter
Happy new year to all. First post of 2009 focuses on the hottest thing in social media in 2008...the rise (and rise) of twitter.
Got to say like most people, when I first embarked on my twitter journey, my initial reaction was one I shared with my aged mother. "Who on earth would care what I'm doing?"
The answer's in the numbers. With more than six million twitterers, growing at an astounding rate of (according to Hubspot's State of the Twittersphere Q4 2008) between five and 10 thousand each day, people clearly do.
Checking out the RSS feeds today, a couple of stories come to light that bring the business potential of twitter into focus.
"Less altruistically, some businesses have discovered that Twitter is an effective way of communicating with consumers. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company's Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others."
Or the erstwhile Financial Times...
"PepsiCo turned to Twitter this month after users began posting criticisms of a Pepsi Max advertisement, which depicted a cartoon calorie committing suicide.
Huw Gilbert, communications manager for PepsiCo International, “tweeted”, or posted a public message, in reply. “Huw from Pepsi here,” he wrote. “We agree this creative is totally inappropriate; we apologise and please know it won’t run again.”
Critics saw Mr Gilbert’s post, with one “tweeting” back: “Thank you . . . for having the guts to get on Twitter on behalf of Pepsi and give us an update on the suicide ad.”
... it appears corporations are starting to figure out the power of micro-blogging. I wonder if Asia-based companies are seeing the value (yet)? Hard to think of any solid examples in my neck of the woods of tweeting success.
Will be interesting to see if the twitter phenomenon continues its growth beyond the confines of English. Will localized micro-blogging sites like China's fanfou, Germany's 1you, Taiwan's buboo, or Thailand's Noknok maintain their share or succomb to twitter's multi-lingual global juggernaut?
If you doubted twitter's universal appeal, you have to go no further than the mircale of twittervision to see that it really is a global conversation.
- Jeremy