TANK

TANK’s Twitter Experiment – over the past month the studio has been experimenting with Twitter. As a studio we have 11 people with different interests, online lifestyles and interests. As a sample of the web 11 people is not exactly representative, however it does give insights into how it can be used professionally and personally. Feedback from the team is below:

• “Had to work out how to use it. Is it a professional tool or for personal tool (or both). Feel it is more a professional network tool”
• “Found it time consuming and distracting”
• “Made some new contacts that I would never of made otherwise”
• “Found it hard to find people, linking from existing contacts was easier”
• “Had a few cyber-stalkers which was a little disturbing”
• “Enables you to filter through to find what interests you”
• “Had to be selective on who you follow”
• “A great networking tool. Getting into the minds of people you admire”
• “Linked me to some great web sites and events”
• “Re-ignited my faith in web 2.0″
• ” We had one innovative job seeker follow us all and have a dialog with us that we may of found difficult”
• “I have 300 followers – it feels good”
• “Probably won’t contribute to it, but enjoy watching it and picking out a few links to look at”
• “Would like to find more people who inspire me
• “Great medium to share thoughts, ideas and images that inspire me. A place to download.”
• “Will keep posting tweets more on a weekly basis at the moment”
• “Great that you are able to block the scary people following you.”
• “Really interesting about who decides to follow you depending on the type of tweets you post.
• “I like the web address shortening tool”
• “Ongoing, will view weekly but not post any tweets”
• “Like the usage in times of emergency like the bushfires. The immediacy of the information could be very critical.”
• “Would be great if they could have a thumbnail on the image, if the tweet is about an image.”
• “Easy to get a whole of different information quickly”
• “Like a RSS feed, another constant stream of information that you are responsible to filter into what is relevant and what is not. Hard to do with those shortened URL’s”
• “Impersonal and to a degree insincere, extraverted (I am an introvert)”
• “Immediate and transient, you have to be around all the time to feel part of the community, to be able to fully feel like you are part of a community/communities”
• “Helps with learning how to communicate small info in short messages.”
• “Useless if you do not know what you want to get out of it”

Out of the team 5 intend to continue using twitter as a tool.

A few key observations:

1. Businesses need to be looking at this space. You can Twitter as a business, but it is important that key people within your organisation are having a voice in this space.
2. Businesses also need to keep an eye on how they are talked about on Twitter – it is a great research tool.
3. More people follow individuals rather than faceless organisations.
4. Twitter is too public for any personal information. Keep personal photographs and updates on Facebook or similar services that allow you to control who sees content.
5. Used strategically, Twitter is a great networking tool.
6. Only a small percentage of people actually contribute to Twitter regularly, but there are a lot of spectators (this is typical of many social networking tools).
7. Using tags strategically, it is possible to “own” a topic on Twitter.

If you have not used Twitter check out http://www.howcast.com/videos/149055