My first Tweetup

Yes, I am on twitter.

I am trying to learn what this new medium of communication is all about. I find myself on twitter everyday. For me, so far, it has been a way for me to get a snapshot of information - what is going on in the world. I follow some friends, I follow some sports writers, I follow some alternative power companies, I follow Shaq.

The creator and co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, was speaking today at Webster University. Jack grew up in Clifton Heights so this was a homecoming of sorts. His speech was short, but to the point. Beyond his own story..."I lived here, I did this, I then did this..." he got to talking about why he thought that something like Twitter needed to exist. What void it need to fill.

He broke it down to 3 things:
IMMEDIACY
TRANSPARENCY
APPROACHABILITY

People want to know stuff now. Reading the paper tomorrow is just not fast enough any more. Tell me what is going on right this minute. Be open and transparent. The more immediate the story, the more truthful (and insightful) it will be. With these followers get to know the person/brand/whatever better and thus make them more approachable.

Very interesting stuff. The way I see it is that the first thing (immediacy) leads to the other two things in this case. I got to asking where would I benefit and my customers benefit if they had immediate information. The answer was right in front of me. There was a large projector screen running the stream of tweets about the speaker and his Q&A. The first person to ask a question was not heard well by the rest of the room. It was answered without repeating the question. What showed up next on the screen is what hundreds of people were thinking. "Can you please repeat the question so the audience can hear it?" It was addressed immediately. Later someone tweeted that the screen behind the speaker scrolling these tweets was distracting, it was temporarily blacked out. WOW! Now anyone had the power to influence change.

Neither ground breaking, but both shed a glimpse into what could be done.

I have already recommended that ENR tweet from our next earnings release meeting. Not many people will likely follow, but those that do really care, and now they can be closer to the company.

Twitter is hard to get used to. I was on it about 6 months before I found my twitter voice and cared enough to tweet. I am still not a hard core user. But I like it, I watch it, I learn from it and now I am learning how to use it to make our company better.

Don't be scared of it. Someone said today that "Twitter is to this generation what the printing press was to an earlier generation". Same things are being said, just now there is a new delivery method.