Twitter for Business, or is it. Really?
Last Wednesday, I attended an excellent BCSNLB event on “Twitter for Business”, and whilst it was bothengaging and well attended (indeed over-subscribed), I am still not convinced that Twitter has a legitimate place in business – for the very simple reason that people are still talking (or trying to convince each other) about it.
There is a school of thought that evangelism can be misplaced; especially if it is stating the obvious and preaching to the choir (e.g. that social networking applications can be beneficial for business 2.0). But if this is the case for Twitter then why does it appear to be taking so long to gain traction with businesses, and thus necessitating a seemingly endless round of “gee whiz, look-what-you-can-do-with-Twitter” brand of discovangelism (SIC). Ok, so there is Dell and a few other examples of the successful application of Twitter, but does that make it the ubiquitous Web2.0 business application that it is so often positioned? Hmmph!
Granted that just like mobile’s SMS, Twitter is a phenomenal tool for exchanging bite-size information and a facilitator of inter-personal interaction with a global community of users (much like the 300M strong FaceBook). All these technologies are being used by businesses as additional, personalised channels for marketing and customer engagement. However, that does not necessarily make Twitter the must-have requirement for businesses wanting to engage with potential customers.
Perhaps I am just being impatient and this will come to pass in time, as in the innovative use of SMS for mobile money, but it would be nice see some more tangible evidence fast. I just remember dot.com bubbles, irrational exuberance, and other more recent nasties. Oh dear, here we go again…
Note: The above is just a personal opinion, and not intended in any way to detract from the excellent event or brilliant speakers / enlightened Twitterati, i.e. Mario Menti (@mario); Judith Lewis (@judithlewis) and Guy Stephens (@guyatcarphone)
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Note: This post was previously published on my BCS DRM Blog, where you can find the original post, and reader comments, in the archives.
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