Media Technologies: Twitter

Twitter is a real time social media outlet that people use to comment on just about anything under the sun. It is fast becoming a great tool to use for marketing businesses. “It can be used to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your business” (Twitter.com, 2010).  Snyder (2010) confirms that “social media is about relationships,” and Twitter is one way to start and maintain those relationships. Because Twitter is real time, businesses need to track the tweets. Unsatisfied customers can tweet to millions of people with a simple click of a button. Following comments posted on Twitter can help a business improve products, find new uses for their products, and solve customer complaints that they may never have known about otherwise.  Twitter can help to make or break a company.  

I heard someone say that Twitter only allows 140 characters, so tweets must be kept brief.  Comm and Burge (2010) said, “Twitter gives you 140 characters because that's all that can fit through SMS systems. If mobile phone companies could handle messages of 200 characters, then that's probably how long our tweets would be.” So we could potentially tweet more than 140 characters. One way is to post partial, sequential tweets. However, the intent is to keep postings brief.  Comm and Burge say these partial tweets really don’t work.  They state that twitter followers “expect to be able to read and absorb it [tweets] in one bite. These are content snacks, not three-course meals with coffee.”  There are other avenues for posting dissertations.  

Twitter is one source that allows individuals to “become more visible and influential on industry structures and media content” (Wasson, 2009). Technological media used to allow industry to select information to share with customers, social media outlets like Twitter now allow individuals and consumers in particular to influence industry. What once was a one-way communication forum, it is now two-way and businesses need to pay attention to the tweets about their products and services.

Sources:

Comm, J. and Burge, K. (2010). Tweet etiquette. Retrieved September 25, 2010, from http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/twitter-etiquette.htm

Snyder, T. (2010). Twitter followers for your business: From zero to hero. Social Media Today. Retrieved September 20, 2010, from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/tomsnyder/183405/twitter-followers-your-business-zero-hero

Twitter.com. (2010). Twitter for Business.  Retrieved September 20, 2010, from www.twitter.com/about.

Wasson, H. (2009). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. Film Quarterly, 62(4), pp. 84-85. Retrieved September 21, 2010, from ProQuest database.