Trying Twitter
At the prompting of Mat Wilcox, I finally signed up on Twitter last Thursday at “markrmcqueen”. Lame screen name I know.
I’d assumed Twitter was little more than an adult version of flirting at work, which some people will admit to be part of Twitters’ allure. With famed VC Roger McNamee casting thoughtful aspersions at the business model during our CVCA Private Equity Magazine interview last year, what was there to miss?
So much of the activity around the web, particularly around the Web 2.0 stuff, is in businesses that don’t have an operating model yet. It is kind of hard to imagine the public market embracing Web 2.0 IPOs of companies with no revenue. Think Twitter. It is a social phenomenon, but when will it be a business? The public market has an incentive to wait and see.
The excitement about David George-Cosh falling into the “gotcha” trap spoke to the omnipresent potential of the app — revenue model aside. Even if we don’t really know what prompted his altercation with April Dunford.
Now that the NYT’s tech journalist is touting it, and Benchmark and IVP have joined Twitter’s venture capital team with an additional US$35 million funding a day or two ago….
Am I late to the party or what?
MRM
Ok, I’m an idiot. I don’t get it. This has to be the stupidest Web 2.0 app ever invented. Like I said, I’m an idiot…
Mark,
Great to see that you joined Twitter – it’s definitely not too late.
I am a HUGE fan of Twitter and have seen firsthand how advanced it is to communications. Not sure how many use it to flirt ….but many use it to keep on top of information, way before the media breaks the story.
Some users are using Twitter to conduct customer service in real time. Because of the site’s searchability, organizations can quickly and easily see what’s being said about them – good or bad – and can react in a public way. Just last month, we saw how crisis communications AND THE MEDIA has completely changed because of Twitter – for a quick example news of the US Airways emergency landing on the Hudson broke on Twitter – way before anyone else- and photos and videos were posted inside of 10 minutes. The information was so compelling and readily available that the major media actually had to use those images in their stories – which of course, were linked on Twitter. More than 400 stories were up online before the first traditional media story broke on TV. It was two hours before US Airways made an official announcement, but to the media and fellow Twitts, it was irrelevant, because they had more than enough information coming from passengers and eyewitnesses on Twitter. That alone is enough to make the usage of Twitter valid – if anyone can harness such an astonishing flow of information and incorporate it into a business model, they’ll be ahead of everyone else.
Our team monitors Twitter for all our clients so that we can keep them updated about what’s being said about them – positive or negative…Imagine harnessing the power of real thinking so quickly. We’ve also made sure that our clients have all secured their corporate and personal names to prevent “Twittersquatting” – people posing as someone they’re not – so to that end, you were very right to go with your name – it’s more authentic that way. No one wants to follow a “corporate” name or a logo. People want real information from real people.
But more importantly Twitter keeps you on top of information flow. Manage your followers and who you follow. Keep it relevant. And all of a sudden you too will understand why you need to be in front of the news.
Mat.