Thoughts on Twitter, and what would you ask the CEO?
Jennifer Jones, the host of the Marketing Voices Show will be having Jack Dorsey the CEO of Twitter on her show. She leaned over and asked me some of my thoughts on Twitter, and I’ve decided to respond here:
My thoughts on Twitter as a communication tool
1) Twitter is a communication tool, if people are talking there, and being influenced then marketers should consider being part of this
2) Twitter is for the inner inner circle, while uber elite, they can influence others,
3) Things that are discussed on Twitter, sometimes happen faster than blog posts, it’s closer to real-time than asynchronous to blogs.
4) I use my feedreader less and less, primarily due to twitter, dangerous? maybe.
If you’ve any questions for Jack, what would you ask him?
Do you think Twitter is a valid marketing tool? Communication Tool?
Questions I have for Jack the CEO of Twitter:
1) Why are there so many errors/slowness with Twitter, any plans on improving service?
2) What’s the proper way to describe using Twitter? Twittering? Tweet? Tweeting?
3) Exactly How many cats does he have working in IT? Are they oursourced? H1B Visa?
If you ask a question in the comments, you will be credited on the show! Oh, one other thing, this is happening today, so please ask questions now. Oh yeah, I just Twittered this to my 377 followers, maybe that will increase responses on this blog in real time. Feel free to add me as a friend too.
16 Comments so far
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Sounds like you’ve identified a sure fire failure here - as it seems to me from your description and a visit to twitter that they are merely re-inventing and re-packaging the wheels already in place to serve such “inner circles.”
In other words, where is the market need - and what do I get out of this tool that I don’t get along other verticals?
How long will Twitter remain 1 field with 1 button? What’s the next step forward? Do you grow the interface, or start a new system with an easy transition from the ‘Classic interface’?
What are his views on what people Twitter?
http://www.daviddalka.com/createvalue/2007/05/06/twittering-boring-cheese-sandwiches/
How do they plan to make money going forward with Twitter?
Do they plan to allow users to add RSS feeds from other sources (i.e., Flickr, blogs, etc.) in the near future?
Where is Twitter going to be in six months.. a year…
Besides just getting bigger I mean.
These are sucky questins:
Have they considered the privacy implications of twitter? (channelling brian solis: your enemies read your twitters)
It seems their API wasn’t written with much thought in the security direction. What safeguards does Twitter have to prevent XSS and XSRF (Cross site scripting and Cross site request forgeries).
What about API calls in the future that would allow developers to use twitter accounts as groups to create “twitter board” mashups like the ones they had at SXSW? Right now it appears you’d have to scrape the site to get that level of ability. What sort of mashups are they envisioning to be done on the twitter platform?
And the million dollar question. Now that you got the buzz and virality, how do you plan on making money?
These are all great, Jennifer has these printed out and will take to the Twitter HQ. Thank you SO much.
Jeremiah — I think we have to look past Twitter to see the value. Twitter as a service is mediocre. It’s all about my core group and extending the 15Mb of fame. Now look at the convergence of technology and its applications in the future. It’s shown us that multi-modal (web, IM, mobile, application) micropublishing is possible and adoption is high. It’s all permission based to people are even further narrowing what voices they want to hear and targeting for advertisers can follow.
I think that Twitter’s model may have some monetization possibilities, but it’s limited. Other models may have more success. Weather alerts based on aggregated user data. Entertainment alerts and sharing with sponsorship opps.
The possibilities are endless with the technology and it has powerful, real-world marketing possibilities. We just need to look past Twitter and expand the horizon.
Do they think that they would have less down time if they hired actual engineers rather than cats? Are cats a viable option to outsourcing? Do the cats require much longer breaks than a human engineer–you know for all those naps? What is their catnip bill?
Catsourcing is the way of the future. Too bad The fur gets stuck in the servers.
Also, the language barriers…”OH HAI”
While I personally worry about privacy issues regarding twitter (can’t really say half of what’s on my mind because I know partners and competitors are reading, for example) I personally love it as a platform, although it took some time for me to really get into its groove. There is an immeadiacy that does indeed keep me from living in my feedreader all day. Plus, like others, I get to brush up on my lolcat skillz. Ultimately, I think people either get twitter, or they don’t. And they love it, or they don’t.
Can they have a ‘vacation mode’ like timered lights when on vacation? This could address privacy concerns about being out of town, stalkers or competitors (if the latter can be considered different). It could also make it look like I am attending that boring conference when I was really at the beach, bringing new meaning to being ‘virtually’ there.
Brian
That could be a great new human service too. I’ll do this for you for 10 dollars a tweet next time you’re at a “Conference”
My answer to you #2 question is that it depends on what the user is using Twitter for. Many (the majority?) are sending out what I call twits. A few are networking and doing business, with Twitter as the tool, not the verb.
My question for the CEO would be about search and other tools to cut the signal to noise ratio…
I just heard from Jennifer Jones that she got Biz Stone, one of the founders.
She was able to ask about SIX (or more) questions from this post and comments.
Talk about community, great job Jennifer.
[…] A few weeks ago, I pinged my network (using Twitter) to find out what you wanted ask the management team at Twitter. Jennifer Jones took that feedback (our shows are about community) to ask questions fromRoss Olson , and David Dalka and others. She was able to sit down with co-founder Biz Stone, to get his thoughts on Twitter. […]