business use of Twitter

brilliant!

[LifeinAsia]

I got a couple of e-mail messages today from our credit card processing company- they are having some issues processing charges. The last one gave a link to Twitter that people could go to for the latest updates.

What a brilliant idea!

[HugeNerd]

A recently canceled NPR show used Twitter for frequent, short news updates. It was quite nice and useful, actually. I don't know that Twitter would be so useful for me (or my site); at least I haven't developed a way to monitize it for myself yet. Not sure if I'll ever go down that road. But Twitter is a useful site if you need to post frequently and desire quick feedback...and can avoid be long-winded (a problem for me).

[bill]

Why not use RSS? It does the same thing on the broadcast end of things.

[tangor]

Sounds like I'm one of the few on the planet who has never twittered. So many sites, so little time. Then again, I was late to join the googlies. What is the rate of inertia/resistance to "new things?" (Don't RSS either)

Serious question.

[HugeNerd]

Why not use RSS? It does the same thing on the broadcast end of things

Twitter is vastly less labor intensive. Also, RSS is more of a one way street -- twitter allows a dialogue between parties.

[bill]

RSS is more of a one way street -- twitter allows a dialogue between parties.

Then why not IM? Why not update your MySpace/FaceBook/LinkedIn status?

[HugeNerd]

Then why not IM? Why not update your MySpace/FaceBook/LinkedIn status?

Well, I don't actually use any of them and only came across Twitter due to the NPR show...but I'll play devil's advocate.

I think Twitter is less labor intensive and doesn't require you to publish as much information about yourself. Can't you use Twitter's features without creating an account, unlike Facebook/LinkedIn/MySpace? Unlike IM/Chatroom I think Twitter posts stay published. I suppose you could accomplish many of the same goals with the comments on a blog site, but once again we are into a bit more labor intensive atmosphere.

The appeal, at least from what I can tell, of Twitter is that you can have a dialogue which is publicly posted with little effort and you don't have to fill out mounds of information or log-in to see it. Create the dialogue and drop a link on your site and then anyone can see the material.

[wangjianshuo]

"Then why not IM? Why not update your MySpace/FaceBook/LinkedIn status? "

Because simplicity. Nothing can beat simplicity. Just because Twitter only has so little feature, that people want to use it.

[MikeBrown]

We use a twitter API for a restaurant website. The client can use it to announce the nightly specials, happy hour, special events, short wait to get a table etc...

quick, easy, free. Whats not to love about it?

[GaryK]

I don't think MySpace or the IM services can send a text, but Twitter can. If you're on the go most of the time and want to keep up with what's going on with businesses that disseminate information this is an ideal medium. News, weather, auctions, restaurants, you name it can benefit from this kind of service.

[edited by: GaryK at 2:11 am (utc) on Mar. 15, 2009]