Twittering in an enterprise will definitely improve inter-departmental transparency and remove duplication of work if the right people were following the right categories.
Terry
· 1 year ago
Twitter is a great way to share ideas and comments without having to invest a ton of time reviewing an entire blog post or article. It's great for the busy bodies of the world : ). Personally, I am bigger fan of the linkedin platform.
Scott Kelly
· 1 year ago
You asked a question in a previous twit about favorite E2.0 case studies. How about a blog post about those responses?
Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton
· 1 year ago
I'm thrilled you're engaging on Twitter and seeing the potential of microsharing within the enterprise. Before you joined, several of your posts on the power of loose ties and on the concentric circles and layers of connection between people in the enterprise made me thump my foot with excitement/impatience "he's describing Twitter!" :-)
(That's how I accidentally crashed your blog during my Enterprise 2.0 talk. Ooops. Sorry!)
Two of my recent elaborations on the value of what I call "enterprise microsharing:"
PS - Naturally I'm sending people here to this post from my Twitter stream www.twitter.com/pistachio and will blog the post later. Compare the immediacy of that to older days when you mailed, faxed, emailed, newslettered or RSS-shared articles of interest to your network. Fast. Inobtrusive. Useful.
if a one has ever struggled with the problem that people who work on one floor never talk to people who work on another floor, even if they are working on the same thing, they have experienced the problem Twitter, blogs and others can solve.
Have you ever known an executives who has been surprised by skills they never knew an employee had or searched externally for a skill set someone working for them has but they never knew about? That is the benefit linking LinkedIn or some other social/professional tool offers.
How much money have businesses spent trying to link contextual understanding? That problem can be beautifully solved linking those LinkedIn to tweets/blog entries.
Software really will save the world...
Chris Bucchere
· 1 year ago
Insightful post, as always.
There's one minor inaccuracy: "Newcomers to the service might have [no followers], in which case their tweets will vanish into the ether, unconsumed by anyone."
That's not entirely true. There's always the "Everyone" tab, which shows posts by (you guessed it) everyone. The posts fly by so quickly that it's very unlikely anyone will ever notice you -- assuming of course that anyone's actually using the "Everyone" feature. I rarely ever use it and I doubt many people do, so it's only one small tick above "vanishing into the ether."
For large organizations, "enterprise twitter" would also probably suffer from so much information overload that nobody would use the "everyone" tab. But forcing people to follow others in order to filter tweets is not good enough for the enterprise. Hashtags aren't that great either, because you have to remember to use them.
Enterprise twitter needs to have some kind of "group" functionality, which would be more like a Facebook wall plus following ability and the "@" replies feature.
On a completely different subject, I love the use of Twitter as an information gathering tool or "zeitgeist meter" if you will. If you garner enough followers, this can be really valuable. Some people call this the "lazy web" presumably because you're asking others to do your research instead of doing it yourself on Google or Wikipedia or elsewhere. But I use it all the time, not only as a means of doing research but also to take advantage of the serendipity that lurks within my extended network of followers.
I look forward to seeing you at IC Enterprise 2.0!
AZ
· 1 year ago
As its quite obvious from "What should I be sure to include in a blog post explaining Twitter & its biz applications to newbies?" and it recieved quick feedback(s). In an enterprise you come across many matters to get feedback on. The best a person can give is where they feel comfortable, open mind yet on thier seats. Also Sometimes it becomes hard to express in front of your boss when face to face.
Jose Felix from Diets Wonder
· 1 year ago
Twitter is rising fast! I made a twitter account the other day and already have a few followers and it is great for my business.
You said: "Twitter is a free service that lets members broadcast short text updates, known as ‘tweets.’ Tweets may be no longer than 140 characters, and can include links (free services like TinyURL and Snipurl are available to take very long URLs and shorten them so that they can be included within tweets)."
I was actually wondering why was it the twitter was using tinyurl.com
Thanks for this post. More people and students should know more about this free service
We are a regulated electric utility - like your NStar ... and I've received very positive feedback from media and customers from the Twitter feed I've begun. Its simplicity is its most attractive feature to me. With my cell phone I can post a Tweet from anywhere. Info on power outages, etc can be communicated to my 'followers' quicker than my posting on our website (sigh...)
Normally I'm right there with you, cheering whatever you're saying. But on this, I have some misgivings.
1) In my personal experience, Twitter has been incredibly valuable to connect me to my practitioner community *outside* the enterprise. I can't do IM or personal Email from here, or Facebook, or a lot of other things, but I can keep up with a twitter feed on my Treo (or on NetVibes or Socialthing, etc). I'm not *expected* to keep up with this feed -- I just want to because it's there, a sort of lifeline to the outer world that's just light-weight enough (keeping up with everyone's blog, for instance, has proven to be impossible in the last 2 years). Now, if my company suddenly decided to run its own Twitter service, I assume I'd be *expected* to keep up with it, and that it'd be co-opted by official project work, management announcements, HR "news" items, and the like. (I think that's a fair assumption.) Making it, essentially, just another corporate channel in a slightly different medium.
2) The fine-tuned/granular categorization you mention has my usability bells going off. Twitter has only a couple bits of syntax to remember - "d" and "@" (and maybe, for the meta-data nerds, the hash #). I suspect that's nearly at the threshold for most people. Each additional proprietary tag (especially ones with more than one character, or ones that users feel they *must* use to have their messages received correctly) greatly reduces the likelihood that a user will even bother.
3) I suspect a great deal of the value companies can get from Twitter-like platforms is already happening with Twitter itself (on non-FailWhale days anyway). We're already using Twitter among employees -- a number of my coworkers follow one another. Having that space where we can be ourselves, disconnected from work, is a relief. There's a tacit agreement that "what happens in Twitter stays there." However, in addition to personal bits of text, we also share links, ideas, etc that are related to our work ... not proprietary internal stuff, but things we learn or find inspiring online or at conferences. The beauty of this is that it's a place where we, as coworkers, can intermingle with the community as a whole, outside company walls. Truly a 'community of practice' sort of behavior.
I'm not commenting this as an argument against your point at all, btw. But I know you like hearing from other points of view, so I'm offering it just as another data point ;-)
Robert McNamee
· 1 year ago
Keeping in the spirit of the 20 second effort I have not thought through this extensively (and I don't use Twitter) but it seems that this is the same as a pretty old technology - Listserv.
Sure there is a limitation as to length of posts related to its use on portable viewers (mobile phones etc...) but it is basically the same old fashioned push technology with subscribable groups. Interestingly it's my impression that Listservs are being more or less supplanted by forums (and previously BBS's) in much of the enterprise space.
So I guess there might be something about these short messages that make them more interesting in a push type knowledge sharing model; or maybe most twitter users are simply too young to have ever had to deal with annoying listserv messages clogging up their emails; or maybe it's nice to get an unexpected message from a friend when its not work related.
Anyway, I wonder if this will eventually move to a forum type format with RSS feeds where you choose when you read the messages your groups have sent out (shift from push to pull).
Yammer has combined features from Twitter and Friendfeed and has added the ability to tag tweets (or are they "yams"?) similar to how you mentioned doing it in your post. They also allow businesses to pay to administer their company's feed (revenue model).
Sweet SMS
· 1 year ago
've been using Twitter.
After a bit over a week, I don't have any interest at all any more of going to the trouble of smsing or logging updates about what I am doing. I hate typing with my thumbs. The day-to-day log of what I am doing aspect doesn't hold much luster for me, personally. I also turned off the notifications from my friends on Twitter. Maybe if my son was old enough to be into it, I would follow him. But generally, I'm not interested in the donuts my friends eat or whether they are at work or at the park.
Where Twitter was very useful was as a way to let people know where they can find you, if you want to be found. I was just in SF for a weekend, where I have a lot of friends who don't even know each other. I was twittering in what I was doing and where so that friends could find me if they wanted to. There were even a couple people who (gasp) don't have cell phones, so it allowed me to message a lot of people all at once. I think of Twitter as sort of the most bare bones version of Dodgeball possible. I loved dodgeball, but couldn't get my friends on board, and so never really used it. To follow me on Twitter you don't need a phone, you don't need to sign up. The simplicity is wonderful.
Singapore Property
· 1 year ago
I think Twitter is perfect to improve communications within enterprises, particularly so in Asian countries. I'm from Singapore and I've worked in large government organizations. One of the main problems that we faced is that staff are often not forthcoming in their comments, especially in face to face conversations. This is asian culture. In contrast, most feedback we get is via written communication.
In talks and seminars, when discussions are opened up to the floor, most of the audience are more comfortable with writing questions on pieces of papers and submitting it to the moderator rather than using the floor mike directly.
Therefore, I think that micro-blogging via twitter will encourage more corporate discussions in Asian countries. I would even go as far as to say that it is the most important enterprise communication tool, as the text medium lends itself very well to Knowledge retention and Management.
Jeremy Hayes
· 1 year ago
I'm interested to hear any thoughts (if any) that people may have about using twitter in an educational setting. To my mind, it's an excellent way to keep a connection to students outside of the 2 hours or so of lectures I have per week with a given class - to send tinyurls linking to blogs, sending updates about new postings on my website/blog (course slides, articles etc.) and generally keep the momentum going in the period between teaching in one week and seeing them again in the next.
The one problem holding me back from using at the moment is the fear that some students who may not be motivated enough to sign up to follow me on twitter would be somehow disadvantaged. I realise there is some personal responsibility required on the part of students here but the interaction is radically different from blogging where students can still access information close to exam time (and statistics from using Blackboard show that many of them leave it until late to register and download reading material). If they don't sign up to Twitter, they could thepretically miss out on a lot of context.
Does anybody here have any experience with 'Twitteducation'? Good/Bad/Indifferent?
dizi izle
· 1 year ago
I think Twitter is perfect to improve communications within enterprises, particularly so in Asian countries. I’m from Singapore and I’ve worked in large government organizations. One of the main problems that we faced is that staff are often not forthcoming in their comments, especially in face to face conversations. This is asian culture. In contrast, most feedback we get is via written communication.
In talks and seminars, when discussions are opened up to the floor, most of the audience are more comfortable with writing questions on pieces of papers and submitting it to the moderator rather than using the floor mike directly.
storage in houston texas
· 1 year ago
my sister and her friends keep talking about twitter, thanks for the great literature, it funny how young people are up to date on everything
Mike Langford
· 1 year ago
Andrew,
Just a short note to thank you for this fantastic write up. I found it a great source of validation while we were developing Tweetworks.
Mike
Essay Writing
· 1 year ago
100% true - the world we created and where we live is nothing else but a pure communication! Wether it's East or West the first media to connect human beings was text and it wasn't replaced with other means yet due to its almost genetical imprint. Way to Twitter! I would say, but with only one condition - do not drive communication to absurd as it's shown on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALbH63Ali9U
Your Top Handys
· 1 year ago
I'm always using Twitter, be it in sharing ideas and thoughts...or sharing information and news. Twitter is really useful for me. I use my mobile phone to update my followers. Twitter is a great tool for busy people yet wanting to connect with the world.
All Comments
(That's how I accidentally crashed your blog during my Enterprise 2.0 talk. Ooops. Sorry!)
Two of my recent elaborations on the value of what I call "enterprise microsharing:"
1. Comment on Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior's remarks about Twitter's potential in the enterprise: http://pistachioconsulting.com/?p=252
2. Slides for the talk I gave at the recent Jive Software Enterprise UI/UX Summit: http://pistachioconsulting.com/?p=251
Warmly, Laura
PS - Naturally I'm sending people here to this post from my Twitter stream www.twitter.com/pistachio and will blog the post later. Compare the immediacy of that to older days when you mailed, faxed, emailed, newslettered or RSS-shared articles of interest to your network. Fast. Inobtrusive. Useful.
http://www.slideshare.net/remco123/timesheet-em...
Regards,
remco
if a one has ever struggled with the problem that people who work on one floor never talk to people who work on another floor, even if they are working on the same thing, they have experienced the problem Twitter, blogs and others can solve.
Have you ever known an executives who has been surprised by skills they never knew an employee had or searched externally for a skill set someone working for them has but they never knew about? That is the benefit linking LinkedIn or some other social/professional tool offers.
How much money have businesses spent trying to link contextual understanding? That problem can be beautifully solved linking those LinkedIn to tweets/blog entries.
Software really will save the world...
There's one minor inaccuracy: "Newcomers to the service might have [no followers], in which case their tweets will vanish into the ether, unconsumed by anyone."
That's not entirely true. There's always the "Everyone" tab, which shows posts by (you guessed it) everyone. The posts fly by so quickly that it's very unlikely anyone will ever notice you -- assuming of course that anyone's actually using the "Everyone" feature. I rarely ever use it and I doubt many people do, so it's only one small tick above "vanishing into the ether."
For large organizations, "enterprise twitter" would also probably suffer from so much information overload that nobody would use the "everyone" tab. But forcing people to follow others in order to filter tweets is not good enough for the enterprise. Hashtags aren't that great either, because you have to remember to use them.
Enterprise twitter needs to have some kind of "group" functionality, which would be more like a Facebook wall plus following ability and the "@" replies feature.
On a completely different subject, I love the use of Twitter as an information gathering tool or "zeitgeist meter" if you will. If you garner enough followers, this can be really valuable. Some people call this the "lazy web" presumably because you're asking others to do your research instead of doing it yourself on Google or Wikipedia or elsewhere. But I use it all the time, not only as a means of doing research but also to take advantage of the serendipity that lurks within my extended network of followers.
I look forward to seeing you at IC Enterprise 2.0!
Also Sometimes it becomes hard to express in front of your boss when face to face.
I made a twitter account the other day and already have a few followers and it is great for my business.
You said:
"Twitter is a free service that lets members broadcast short text updates, known as ‘tweets.’ Tweets may be no longer than 140 characters, and can include links (free services like TinyURL and Snipurl are available to take very long URLs and shorten them so that they can be included within tweets)."
I was actually wondering why was it the twitter was using tinyurl.com
Thanks for this post. More people and students should know more about this free service
José Felix :smirk:
Its simplicity is its most attractive feature to me. With my cell phone I can post a Tweet from anywhere. Info on power outages, etc can be communicated to my 'followers' quicker than my posting on our website (sigh...)
http://twitter.com/psnh
1) In my personal experience, Twitter has been incredibly valuable to connect me to my practitioner community *outside* the enterprise. I can't do IM or personal Email from here, or Facebook, or a lot of other things, but I can keep up with a twitter feed on my Treo (or on NetVibes or Socialthing, etc). I'm not *expected* to keep up with this feed -- I just want to because it's there, a sort of lifeline to the outer world that's just light-weight enough (keeping up with everyone's blog, for instance, has proven to be impossible in the last 2 years). Now, if my company suddenly decided to run its own Twitter service, I assume I'd be *expected* to keep up with it, and that it'd be co-opted by official project work, management announcements, HR "news" items, and the like. (I think that's a fair assumption.) Making it, essentially, just another corporate channel in a slightly different medium.
2) The fine-tuned/granular categorization you mention has my usability bells going off. Twitter has only a couple bits of syntax to remember - "d" and "@" (and maybe, for the meta-data nerds, the hash #). I suspect that's nearly at the threshold for most people. Each additional proprietary tag (especially ones with more than one character, or ones that users feel they *must* use to have their messages received correctly) greatly reduces the likelihood that a user will even bother.
3) I suspect a great deal of the value companies can get from Twitter-like platforms is already happening with Twitter itself (on non-FailWhale days anyway). We're already using Twitter among employees -- a number of my coworkers follow one another. Having that space where we can be ourselves, disconnected from work, is a relief. There's a tacit agreement that "what happens in Twitter stays there." However, in addition to personal bits of text, we also share links, ideas, etc that are related to our work ... not proprietary internal stuff, but things we learn or find inspiring online or at conferences. The beauty of this is that it's a place where we, as coworkers, can intermingle with the community as a whole, outside company walls. Truly a 'community of practice' sort of behavior.
I'm not commenting this as an argument against your point at all, btw. But I know you like hearing from other points of view, so I'm offering it just as another data point ;-)
Sure there is a limitation as to length of posts related to its use on portable viewers (mobile phones etc...) but it is basically the same old fashioned push technology with subscribable groups. Interestingly it's my impression that Listservs are being more or less supplanted by forums (and previously BBS's) in much of the enterprise space.
So I guess there might be something about these short messages that make them more interesting in a push type knowledge sharing model; or maybe most twitter users are simply too young to have ever had to deal with annoying listserv messages clogging up their emails; or maybe it's nice to get an unexpected message from a friend when its not work related.
Anyway, I wonder if this will eventually move to a forum type format with RSS feeds where you choose when you read the messages your groups have sent out (shift from push to pull).
Just my 20 second worth (more or less).
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
Yammer
Yammer has combined features from Twitter and Friendfeed and has added the ability to tag tweets (or are they "yams"?) similar to how you mentioned doing it in your post. They also allow businesses to pay to administer their company's feed (revenue model).
After a bit over a week, I don't have any interest at all any more of going to the trouble of smsing or logging updates about what I am doing. I hate typing with my thumbs. The day-to-day log of what I am doing aspect doesn't hold much luster for me, personally. I also turned off the notifications from my friends on Twitter. Maybe if my son was old enough to be into it, I would follow him. But generally, I'm not interested in the donuts my friends eat or whether they are at work or at the park.
Where Twitter was very useful was as a way to let people know where they can find you, if you want to be found. I was just in SF for a weekend, where I have a lot of friends who don't even know each other. I was twittering in what I was doing and where so that friends could find me if they wanted to. There were even a couple people who (gasp) don't have cell phones, so it allowed me to message a lot of people all at once. I think of Twitter as sort of the most bare bones version of Dodgeball possible. I loved dodgeball, but couldn't get my friends on board, and so never really used it. To follow me on Twitter you don't need a phone, you don't need to sign up. The simplicity is wonderful.
In talks and seminars, when discussions are opened up to the floor, most of the audience are more comfortable with writing questions on pieces of papers and submitting it to the moderator rather than using the floor mike directly.
Therefore, I think that micro-blogging via twitter will encourage more corporate discussions in Asian countries. I would even go as far as to say that it is the most important enterprise communication tool, as the text medium lends itself very well to Knowledge retention and Management.
The one problem holding me back from using at the moment is the fear that some students who may not be motivated enough to sign up to follow me on twitter would be somehow disadvantaged. I realise there is some personal responsibility required on the part of students here but the interaction is radically different from blogging where students can still access information close to exam time (and statistics from using Blackboard show that many of them leave it until late to register and download reading material). If they don't sign up to Twitter, they could thepretically miss out on a lot of context.
Does anybody here have any experience with 'Twitteducation'? Good/Bad/Indifferent?
In talks and seminars, when discussions are opened up to the floor, most of the audience are more comfortable with writing questions on pieces of papers and submitting it to the moderator rather than using the floor mike directly.
Just a short note to thank you for this fantastic write up. I found it a great source of validation while we were developing Tweetworks.
Mike
Wether it's East or West the first media to connect human beings was text and it wasn't replaced with other means yet due to its almost genetical imprint.
Way to Twitter! I would say, but with only one condition - do not drive communication to absurd as it's shown on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALbH63Ali9U