gicela morales

Twitter is quickly being adopted by individuals, organisations and businesses as a new way to communicate to the world. By attempting to answer the question ‘what are you doing?’ , people come up with all sorts of interesting facts, anecdotes, thoughts, links, questions and answers… and the list goes on.

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows you to write anything – so long as you keep to 140 characters. You decide which people you wish to ‘follow’ and in turn those people might follow you back.

You can use a Twitter profile to deal with customer queries, like Zappos, the successful USA online retailer, distribute the latest news like the Guardian Technology News, raise money for a good cause like Mara Triangle (pictured), share news of your travels, like Stephen Fry… or simply join the conversation.

Mara Triangle Twitter Profile

I learn a lot from the people that I ‘follow’ on Twitter, and in turn I like sharing links and thoughts with those that follow me. This makes Twitter a particularly valuable tool. Try it – ask a question and you will get inundated with answers!

You can also make your Twitter profile ‘private’ – although I really don’t see the benefit of this. Most people go public!

There is a service called Yammer, which is similar to Twitter but for businesses and lives behind a firewall. Only people on the same domain name can access to it.

But hold on, I have email, and an intranet in my organisation. Why would I want to have yet another application? Well, people who like your products or services will tell you so, and those that don’t may also tell you why. This is valuable feedback that you would have not gained otherwise.