A buddy and I have an ongoing argument about Twitter – he sees it as a waste of time, akin to passing notes back at school.
I on the other hand see it being a valuable communication facilitator – case in point an experience this afternoon.
A software vendor is in the process of discussing the development plans of a large platform player – nothing too interesting there. It seems however that the platform player has been a little recalcitrant in getting back to said vendor. Here’s where twitter comes in, the issue isn’t something one would blog about, neither is it one that one would send an email about. It is however just the issue that one would post a short, sweet tweet about.
That tweet, in essence a little bit complaining, a little bit despondent, was noticed by a number of people connected directly and indirectly with the platform player – hey presto – moves underway to resolve the issue before it becomes anymore of an issue – problem circumvented, communication facilitated.
Twitter does have a purpose!
Agreed. I didn’t really consider benefits like that when I signed up for Twitter until I twittered about installing VMWare and got a tweet from the VMWare team asking about my experience.
The Zen of Twitter 🙂
There’s Communication Lubrication and Communication Diarhoea and the latter has been very prevalent lately. Us industry pros should use it a little more constructively – and be ‘ProTwitterers’ and not (as our lead dev puts it) ‘Twatters’…
We’re new to twitter, but liking it – not wanting to pee people off with it though like some…
“Twatters” – ha ha ha ha – cracking line.
And yes I agree, lead by example etc – but I’m not only a “ProTwitter” but also a person who happens to use it for whatever I use it for.
I think just using it is quite enough of a “lead” for a lot of the people I know and associate with.