Twitter (for entrepreneurs)

January 19, 2009 in 5 out of 5 stars, Twitter

What is it?

Twitter: A means of being part of The Conversation. The fourth leg on the internet communication stool (yes, the stool has four legs now). Email, Blogging, IM, Twitter. (I know, I know. Bear with me.)

A note: this post is for those of you who have never heard of Twitter, or who don’t “get it.” See the rest of you back here for tomorrow’s post!

Who makes it?

Those smarties who changed the world by creating Blogger – Evan Williams (@ev) and company. Could they really be responsible for pioneering two of the four most important internet communication methods? Turns out that yes, yes they could. And they have.

Hard to believe? Read on.

Why is it the killerest?

Well, let me start by saying that only because of the pedigree of this service, I reluctantly signed up back in 2006.

Then promptly rolled my eyes.

I figured it was one more shiny object the internet kids were chasing. So I largely ignored it. But instead of fading away like a fad, the noise only great louder, the adoption more widespread, and finally, I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I think it was when Shaq  (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) started using Twitter seriously. I mean, if Shaq gets Twitter?

So I decided to invest a little time to see if I could “get it.” And get it, I did. Bear with me, and you might get it too. And yes, this is extremely relevant for entrepreneurs. Chances are, you want to get it.

First, a quick description. Twitter is about communication. It’s kind of like micro-blogging. You make a “post” (called a “tweet”), of 140 characters or less in length, and anyone who “follows” you, can see your post/tweet. Most will just see it, anyone can reply to it if they want, and you both move on. It’s that simple.

At first I thought: what do I care if someone just ate breakfast? I have to admit, that following someone you don’t know, or know of – and hearing about them eating breakfast has pretty limited personal appeal, at least for me. That said, one of the uses of Twitter, is to connect with your friends and family who do care that you just ate breakfast, and this is a way to share that, without sending out an email, or making a blog post, or saying something on IM which expects a response.

But Twitter is about more than that. And you as an entrepreneur need to know what that more is.

First step, you need a tool. Not the Twitter.com website. You go there to sign up, and you go there to find new people to follow, but you don’t go there to use Twitter to communicate. This is important to know. The moment that I “got” Twitter, was when I started using TweetDeck. Now, there are a couple bazillion similar products, I happened to choose this one first after a little research, and about 24 hours after starting to use it, I suddenly “got” Twitter. TweetDeck gave me an interface where I could easily watch, and be part of the conversation. This is key. I can’t imagine deriving the real value from Twitter just relying on the web site to stay connected to it.

For those of you who aren’t in front of your computers all day – Twitter was also (perhaps originally?) created for you. You can do everything I discuss via your phone with text messages and apps for your iPhone or similar phone. This is a whole huge aspect of Twitter that I haven’t dived into yet, but if you’ve got a phone with texting, you can be part of the The Conversation too.

Ok, so the key understanding Twitter, as I elude to in my intro, is to understand that Twitter helps you be part of The Conversation. What’s funny is that starting to use Twitter, was like putting on special hearing aids that allowed me to hear a new frequency. Suddenly I became aware that there is indeed a conversation going on that I had no idea about. Now that I’m using Twitter, I’m part of the conversation. I think for most entrepreneurs, being part of the conversation is exactly what you want to do. No matter what your market segment it, chances are that segment is having a conversation on Twitter. Do you want to be part of it?