Twitter is an internet tool that is increasingly used for ‘Microsharing’.
Microsharing according to Social Media Agency ‘Pistachio’ (Laura Fitton – @pistachio):
‘What is microsharing?
Let’s start with the best-known microsharing application, Twitter. Twitter is a collection of remarks. It’s what a group of people–a very dynamic group of people who are connected and becoming more closely connected everyday–find remarkable. The connections between people, the ambient intimacy.
Microsharing reduces the emotional and intellectual distance between people and helps them become more engaged, connected, effective and collaborative.
Microsharing is hard to understand at first, and frequently seems trivial and foolish, but it generates tremendous value and opportunity for participants who really get it and who push to discover its hidden potential.’
For me, the key benefit of this tool is indeed the ‘reduction of emotional and intellectual distance’ on internet platforms. It is very easy to:
- find people with whom you want to exchange ideas, and
- actually start conversations online.
It seems to be more easy starting an online conversation compared to e.g.:
- commenting on a blog post from someone else, or
- by commenting on a forum.
Therefore, the trend I am seeing in 2009 is to increasingly incorporate Twitter-like functionality in forum and blogging platforms.
Business benefits
Twitter facilitates ‘organizing without organizations’ (Clay Shirky: ‘Here comes everybody’). With the emergence of Social Media tools like Twitter, the costs for people to organize themselves in (ad-hoc) groups is greatly reduced.
Business problems that until now were not addressed can now be tackled. This also means that Twitter will enable cross-unit information sharing within large organizations in a very cost-effective manner.
Attention must be paid to information security, reliability, compliance, and integration with other enterprise communication platforms. For the enterprise, several Twitter-like tools are emerging that take these specific requirements into account. Examples are www.yammer.com, laconi.ca, ESME.
How to start with Twitter
Here is how you can start using Twitter:
- Create an account at twitter.com
- Use twitter search for some interesting topics and people to ‘follow’
- The best way to start with Twitter is to also have a blog (e.g. on Wordpress.com). This is your ‘home base’ on which you post topics of you special interests.
- Post references to your blog posts on Twitter (‘tweet’ them) to elicit conversations about your blog post
- Start ‘following’ people that have a blog with a shared interest. Increasingly, blog authors indicate their Twitter name on their blog.
Some people on the internet from which I have learned a lot about Twitter are:
- Chris Brogan: one of the real ‘gurus’ on Social Media. He really known how to combine tools such as blogs and twitter to grow his ‘audience’, and deliver real value to them!
- Darren Rowse (‘Problogger’): great site on how to start with twitter
- Davied van Berlo: ‘evangelist’ on Web 2.0 for Dutch government agencies
- Krispijn Beek – Web 2.0 expert from the Dutch Department of Agriculture
Blog posts on ‘How to start with Twitter: Guide to Twitter for Business‘
Video: “Twitter in Plain English” – een commoncraft show; uitleg over Twitter – handig als je Twitter nog niet kent:
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