Having just received our revised Terms of Service recently from Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, it’s clear that Twitter is getting ready to move into the next phase in their business development.
There does seem to be a polarisation in the use of this type of social networking, that is demarcating between business and recreational use and, indeed, Twitter are rumoured to be considering charging corporate users – like us, I guess.
The graph below shows our community – we’d like to think of it as a ‘hardcore’ group of like-minded followers!
We started using Twitter in February and have been delighted in the way it enables us to receive valuable feedback from our community of followers. Although in absolute terms compared to celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross, our numbers are substantially more ‘modest’ but the number of followers has increased well over the six months or so.
We learnt very early on that we mustn’t use Twitter just as a ‘broadcast’ medium and that interaction is the name of the game and have discovered new friends and also a vital source of opinion and feedback.
We can also claim that Twitter has generated revenue for us, which given some of the cynicism we have seen from others who like to dismiss this type of technology, is very pleasing. We do believe that social networking has a place in the workplace arena and certainly we are ensuring that this type of approach is rolled into a varied digital marketing strategy; one that encompasses more conventional techniques, eg email, web etc. coupled with the more avant garde. In fact, some commentators are suggesting that Twitter or services like it could replace conventional email mass marketing.
Now, whether this momentum will be arrested by the move to chargeable services is debatable – only time will tell, I guess, but it might well change the way corporate use justifies the effort of servicing this particular digital channel.
