Saturday, May 3, 2008

Twitter: microblogging and its business implications

I have some friends who have started blogs and find them to be so much work to update that they simply abandon them after a while. To be certain, it takes discipline to writer regularly, and at the heart of it, if you don't enjoy writing, you won't enjoy blogging. But if you like the idea of sharing what you're currently working on and giving people updates in short snippets is more your speed, Twitter might be for you. And that's especially true if you are a company, as many user are likely to this connectivity tool to log a company's missteps in customer service. 


Twitter is about two years old and the only question it asks is "What are you doing?" in 140 characters, or less, you answer the question, from IM, from the twitter site, or by text messaging from your phone. I usually put up the URL of my latest blog post, and use it as a way to get the word out about my writing. 


Rob Pegoraro wrote an article this past week in the Washington Post about Twitter, and other short update services available on sites like Facebook. Towards the end of the article, he mentioned that companies like JetBlue have a presence on Twitter and respond appropriately to customer comments posted there about the company. 


Best of all, the log of follow-up by the company is available for viewing by anyone on the system - essentially a diary and timeline of how JetBlue has handled a customer issue that a customer felt strong enough to tell the world about. Afterall, when you're given lemons....  


You can follow me on twitter. Name = christanyc

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