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The Power of Twitter January 22nd, 2010
Yes, I tweet. And along with other social media I use, most of the benefits I have gained have been on the social/personal side. I have some followers, but there are more people that I follow (that sounds wrong, doesn’t it?). I follow a mix of business and personal contacts. I learn from some but mostly am amused by the tweets I receive and read. And until recently, Twitter has been more of a toy that I felt obligated to play with in order to keep up with everyone else. I didn’t really get the power of twitter until two recent events – one involved a free meal, the other a tragic world event.
My husband was a fairly frequent guest during a specific segment about snacks with a local talk radio station that has since switched its format. A lot of his followers on Twitter were fans of the show, and in particular, fans of that segment. Now he doesn’t always tweet about snacks or food, but recently he mentioned he wasn’t a fan of a franchised Mexican style restaurant. He sent off his tweet and didn’t really give it another thought. Within 10 minutes, via Twitter, a representative of the company asked him to e-mail his addy (i.e. address) so that he could try them again. Two days later, in the mail, he got a coupon for a free meal (or two). So, Twitter = free meals? Well, no. But this particular company does offer coupons quite frequently on their site.
Haiti. An earthquake strikes with a recorded 7.0 on the Richter scale. The first place I found out about it? Twitter. How could I donate money? Twitter was the first to tell me that I could do so via my cell. (As of January 14, over $4 million had been contributed via U.S. cell phones to the Red Cross – the largest support of mobile devices in history.) [Read the article here] If I didn’t want to make a donation via my cell phone, how else could I donate? I learned about options via Twitter.
This will lead to a discussion soon as to whether people will see and respond to a tweet quicker than an e-mail. What are the comparative trust factors, particularly when a good deal or a call-to-action comes along? How quickly is the chaff sorted from the wheat when the Twitter “hive mind” starts examining information that is shot along at such a quick rate?
However, those questions are ultimately answered. Twitter is here to stay – I’m convinced of that. And now I have real evidence of the power, the business power, of Twitter.
One Comment for "The Power of Twitter"
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On January 22, NPR- Science Friday featured a discussion on the topic of “texting donation”. The discussion touched on the Pros and Cons of Social Media and Twitter for collecting donations. It touched on the benefits of Twitter for use in emergency cases and also how not all social media collections applications are created the same.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122857697John Moffitt on January 22nd, 2010 at 5:44 pm
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