A mainstream media article on Twitter, which is fairly rare to see (as well as the fact, it's not calling its users lunatics)
Considering their proximity (both in San Francisco), one wonders whether Linden Labs shouldn't share its PR secrets with the folks over at Twitter, but then again...perhaps that's the goal i.e. stay somewhat under the radar and build up a loyal and solid base of "followers".
I've been using Twitter for some time now and don't regard myself as a raving lunatic. I've been using jaffejuice as my primary handle, and shortly will introduce a new one for my book, "Join the Conversation" - http://www.twitter.com/jointheconvo
"blogging about twitter right now When I'm done I'll twitter about my blog post :)" (with 59 characters to spare, I might add)
Twitter is definitely still growing and improving, for example...when one is on the road and tweeting via mobile, Twitter becomes decidedly one-way/communication based, as opposed to conversational insofar that the Tweeter will not get to see all the responses to their tweet. This is mainly because of a) the volume of incoming tweets and b) the cost of text messaging en masse.
A suggestion to improve this might be the ability to create an mobile-rule which allows any tweets with the tweeter's name preceded by an "a" sign i.e. @jaffejuice.
The above point is less of a shortcoming and more of an opportunity (in fact Twitter is starting to make some interesting progress on the mobile front...an essential component of its strategic recipe for success, no doubt)
It also points out a very interesting consumer insight about Twitter, namely the seeding of syntax into our social media vernacular. The naming convention i.e. @jaffejuice or @Scobleizer (the handle of well-known blogger, Robert Scoble) has successfully infiltrated blogging as a nifty way to respond via the comment thread to multiple people at the same time.
A nice cup of Joe to start the day
A huge part of Twitter is the immediacy of it all. The company was founded on a simple insight, "what are you doing right now?", but as the article above suggests might be evolving to a more aspirational platform i.e. capturing life in 140 characters or less. To be sure, the former might have led to some of the earlier negative PR
What's so special about having a cup of coffee to start the day and who cares that Joseph Jaffe is about to have a cup of coffee to start his day?
Maybe so, but I will say 2 things about the randomness of things like "on a train into the city with my daughter for the day," it led me to meet up with Derek Mehraban, who was in town with his daughters on vacation. The same Derek Mehraban, who approached me to speak at Arb Camp in Ann Arbor on October 27th. Socialdipity my friends.
What Twitter now has to figure out is how to literally capture the essence of that immediacy and extend it's value accordingly.
With automatic feeds from blog posts (still haven't figured out how to do that myself), seeding announcements, thought leadership, beta invites and events is incredibly efficient. Google is already capturing tweets and many people have been surprised to find tweets in search results and/or in Google Alerts. I've also finally (thanks to Mitch Joel) figured out how to update my tweets automatically in my Facebook profile.
All in all, it's "IM meets social networking" (that's my 26 character elevator pitch) and will present intriguing possibilities for marketers and brands as it - along with brands - continue to explore the future (hopefully together)
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