OK the new kid on the block has grown fast, 974% last year apparently! Everyone’s talking about it, in the legal world it’s on every conference agenda. It’s big news.
So it comes as a shock when people question its value. And judging by recent articles and posts on the web the time is ripe to try and knock twitter from its podium:
- The recent Neilson reporting on the “twitter quitters”
- The big furore in the legal twitterverse with Larry Bodine’s article “Twitter Not Effective for Law Firm Marketing”
- And today Charles Christian posts he’s had enough with twitter (I would link to the post but it looks like he’s deleted his twitter account altogether too!)
And thus it get’s articles written about it, repeated and quoted in blogs and twitter itself (yes I understand the irony!)
To me though people are missing the point, twitter isn’t facebook or myspace so comparisons with them doesn’t work. It is just a brand for micro blogging (there are plenty of others out there: kwippy, plurk, jaiku, identica etc). Yes, twitter as a brand may fail but micro blogging is here to stay.
Face-to-face, letters, telephone, fax, email, instant messaging (IM) and twitter (micro blogging)
They’re just all just forms of communication, nothing more nothing less. People will prefer one over the other, over a period of time one form may get used much more than others. But none of them are going away.
IM has been around for years, but it’s only just starting to move into the business world (outside IT depts). But in a short time it will take off in businesses and we’ll see email usage fall away, just as we saw the use of telephones fall once email exploded on the scene (don’t believe it, just ask any 16 year old how much they use email!).
Micro blogging will start to appear too in corporate environments as people experiment with laconi.ca and jaiku.
My guess though is that Larry Bodine doesn’t necessarily think twitter is a waste of time, he’s in marketing and one sure fire way to get your name out there is to shout the opposite to what everyone else is shouting (after all it was only 5 months ago that “Twitter is valuable to legal professionals”) . And everyone has taken notice, I bet Larry has more speaking engagements and requests for articles than at any time in the last 12 months!
He may actually be right on twitter not being an effective law firm marketing tool, but as for being “sucked into the black hole of buzz about twitter” it isn’t a black hole, twitter or micro blogging will be just like the telephone here to stay for a long time!
Interesting post, not sure I agree with the widespread takeup of micro-blogs yet, maybe in large corporate firms where there are evangelists who can fight the corner effectively for these tools, but all to often in smaller firms these sorts of things are viewed with suspision “people wittering (pun intentional) for 5 hours a day instead of getting on with work”.. is a phrase I have heard from management in more than one firm.. usually with just cause.
I don’t think that this technology has found its niche yet in the business world, there are obviously new ways to exploit it as yet untapped. Personally I’d like to implement it for things like departmental announcements etc, but the arguments would be “we can do that in email why bother with micro blogs”.
A 16 year olds requirements are also very different to that of the current business user, and so I think a comparison with how they use these tools is currently a bit premature… only when they become decision makers in the years to come will some of the things you describe come true.
Unfortunately until then it will be a few industry sectors with the people with the hoospa to make senior management see the value of such technology by demonstrating a real ROI… The moment you could show this affected the companies bottom line directly you would see business taking it more seriously.. just like they did with email. I mean you show me a company that doesn’t have an email address.
It’s not just the way we communicate that is changing, it’s the way we find and distribute information. Micro-blogging is the only medium I have come across that allows a high volume of content from multiple sources on specific topics at the click of a button. Some consumers of information (be it b2b or b2c) are demanding these channels, regardless of whether the suppliers of it want to or not. They will make their purchasing decision on the way THEY want to be dealt with and if that is via micro-blogging so be it.
The trouble with twitter, is it takes some initial effort to understand how it works and unless you follow interesting and relevant people/ organisations it’s easy to lose interest. On the other hand I know Legal Tech people on twitter appreciate the content we post, but there just aren’t that many using it… yet!
Email is still a necessary evil, but only because other mediums are not yet developed enough. Google wave is a great example of the future. Live, collaborative interaction using lots of different mediums at the same time.
You must also remember that it’s very early days for Twitter. It has minimal functionality. I have no doubt whatsoever that once it becomes a business, it’s value will increase to the business community and penetration will force most companies to take notice.
As for 16 yr olds vs. business, I would argue that generation y is already here. I engage with customers and partners over MSN, Twitter, Blogs etc and I’m 34 years young 🙂
Nice post!
I have dispensed with RSS feeds because of Twitter. I couldn’t keep up with both and 140 characters is a lot quicker to read than pages of blog posts. If the headline captures my attention I take a look. I also don’t feel I have to keep up with Twitter whereas with RSS feeds I felt I did.
John.
I read your article with great pleasure. Thank you.