Twitter, another tool for the new-media toolbox

13 Feb

Posted by: Bryan in: Marketing, New media tools, Twitter, Using new media

There’s something strangely addictive and alluring about Twitter.

On the surface it’s nothing more than a glorified service for typing short text messages that answer the question “What are you doing?”

Ahh, but dig a little deeper, and the marketing lightbulbs should start buzzing inside your brain:

You can build a network of friends — I’m already up to 24 in a week’s time
You can send and receive messages, including your friends’, from your mobile phone or an instant messenging client — perfect for quickly sending out group messages or status updates, such as for political campaigning)
You can drop linkable URLs into your messages — hello, mobile marketing!
You can private message specific friends
You can add a widget to your blog that displays your latest message (see the sidebar on Chris Brogan.com as an example)

Hey, the corporate world is starting to experiment with Twitter. Maybe you should, too.

Update. Here’s where you can follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/bryper

Technorati Tags: Twitter

8 Responses

Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast
13|Feb|2007 1

I’s also an instant focus group and Digg.com tag team for SEO.
Bryan
13|Feb|2007 2

No doubt. This mind continues to race with possibilities.
Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast
13|Feb|2007 3

My thinking is this: Twitter is probably not far off from Twitter groups, where you can send messages to select groups of people.

When that becomes available, you’ll be able to Twitter to people just interested in, say, Jobs in Boston for marketing professionals.

Now imagine this. Write a bridge between Twitter and an RSS feed.

Every time someone posts to an RSS feed, it auto-generates a Twitter.

Wouldn’t that be neat?
Bryan
13|Feb|2007 4

It sure would. And I know a certain company that could take advantage of just that kind of application

Do you think the RSS > Twitter arrangement is what is happening with the BBC bots, such as here: http://twitter.com/bbcnews?
Chris Brogan...
13|Feb|2007 5

And it makes a great way to friendsource. I’ve used it to find people at CES in Las Vegas. I’ve used it to coordinate people meeting me in San Francisco. I’ve used it to just wish people well at a distance.

I think it’s a swell app.
Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast
13|Feb|2007 6

Almost certainly, yes. It’s not hard. Invoke SimplePie in PHP, parse the titles, truncate at 140 characters, and do an HTTP POST via CURL. Would probably be about 60 lines of code to do that. Is there enough interest in the Twitter community for me to write one? Post your comments here.
Bryan
13|Feb|2007 7

Chris Penn: There’s certainly interest from this member of the Twitter community. I don’t see that app on the Twitter Fan Wiki, either.

Chris Brogan: How did you do your searches for San Francisco-based Twitterers, for example? Using Google Blog Search or Technorati, I’m thinking?
Andy Nulman
15|Feb|2007 8

Bryan–

This is one of the mobile world’s holy grails right now: how to we bring the heat that is social networking to the handset, and how do we mobile market without descending into the dungeons of spam. I will pass along Twitter to our R&D team at Airborne. Thanks for exposing it to the masses. But next time, be a real friend and give me a head start

–Andy