Listen to the birds: Twitter
A little birdie told me that The Egg Factory has come up with a new menu. Which little birdie? Care to guess?
Twitter is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighbourhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006, and Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. Users are given a page where they can keep updating their status via the website or via mobile. They can follow updates or ‘tweets’ on other users’ pages, and people can subscribe to them. This way, any new development can be put up at one location and everyone will know. Organisations, restaurants, groups, NGOs…everyone can have their own page. So you think Obama was hooked to his Blackberry? If you want to check out what else the most powerful man in the world is up to, find out at http://twitter.com/BarackObama
So much for the popular side of twitter – but the story doesn’t end here. The twitter search gives a through update on anything people might tweet about. If you want to find out what’s happening in Gurgaon, key it in twitter search, and you’ll see the latest tweets that contain the word ‘Gurgaon’. A TV series by Julian Smith tweets me regularly about its new episodes. The attack on the Hotel Taj in Mumbai received a record number of tweets while it was happening.
Some believe that Twitter is so popular because of the small size of the tweets (restricted at 140 characters), so even in this world of short attention spans, people don’t mind reading these. Plus of course, twitter is closely intertwined with your mobile phone, and gives us something to do. So why won’t we do that, since we are on our phones the entire day anyway. Saw a dog hump another, cool – twitter it! To view how twitter will change the way we communicate, check out the 25 Best Twitter Cartoons: http://www.slideshare.net/chadrichards/top-25-twitter-cartoons?src=embed
Of course, the reason Twitter is even mentioned in this blog is simple, just like most lives, twitter has immense potential in marketing. The latest buzzword in marketing these days is ‘Engagement’ and with twitter, not only can companies engage people, they can update them and keep popping with interesting tweets. In the end, brand-recall sky-rockets. That’s not all, a number of independent developers are offering free twitter applications that take the twitting experience to a whole new level – from opinion polls to tweet invites to gift wish lists. Check out a few at http://twtapps.com
In other cases, tweets can help keep traffic returning to websites. ‘Tweet! MTV Bakra starts 14th December - Tweet! - Wicked game on Hungama, dude – Tweet! - New Julian Smith video on youtube – Tweet! - CycleAroundTheGlobe adds pictures of its latest expedition to Sikkim on Facebook – Tweet! - Check out the new version of the Fiat Linea’. Coupled with other online tools, the whirlwind of engagement begins.
And that’s how short the story on twitter could be. Tweet!
Saurabh Kejriwal