Rules for internet project management: RSS & English

The advantages of Twitter

I Twitter. I often have to explain to customers and other relations what Twitter is. And that’s pretty tricky. It is not so very difficult to explain how Twitter works, but to explain exactly what it is and what its usefulness is, is more difficult.

At Twitter the intention is that you answer the question "What are you doing". As a result, you may only receive alerts as "at work", "at lunch" etcetera. That doesn’t seem like information you really need to know.

Although the service is used in this way by very many people, it is in practice often something else.I use Twitter in particular to communicate with others in the industry. I get interesting links, keep in touch with interesting people and get to know new interesting people. My network is growing because of Twitter. Therefore I do not use it is privately, but purely work-related.

You can use Twitter is in many ways, to me, these are the main advantages of Twitter:

• Contact with people in my industry
• Acquiring knowledge about the market
• Finding interesting links
• Sharing interesting information
• Branding

I think at this moment Twitter is a tool which is used primarily by the early adopters, not yet by the big crowds. Therefore I use it as an early adopter and to talk to these early adopters. As long as you know who and why you’re using it it’s a very useful tool.

Below you can see three movies about Twitter. The first is a news item on CBS News about Twitter, the second is a breakdown of Twitter and the third is a humorous film from Seesmic on a visit to the headquarters of Twitter.

Twitter at CBS

How to use Twitter

Seesmic Twitter