Twitter for Business

posted by   Ian Wyatt   |    September 17, 2008

Posted in   New Media   |   Comments

Social networking site Twitter has been on the up and up, with currently more than two million users. While Twitter's business model remains in question by Silicon Valley outsiders (and perhaps insiders alike, although the company has raised $20 million in venture capital), the question arises as to whether this startup will prove a helpful tool to businesses.

Since learning about Twitter from Jason Pontin, editor and chief of the MIT Technology Review, while attending the Entrepreneur's Organization Masters in Entrepreneurship Program at MIT in May, I've been playing around with the micro blogging site on my own and for fun (if you're not already doing so, you can "follow" me on Twitter by clicking here). It can be quite addictive, and I find myself sending short (less than 140 characters) updates answering the question, "What are you doing?"

While I find Twitter to be lots of fun, my fiancée sometimes finds my distraction to be annoying; particularly when I feel compelled to update my network of 27 followers that the braised lamb shank I just ate was amazing, or of my spotting of a bear crossing the road (which was actually pretty cool).

One of the questions I began thinking about was whether there is an application for Twitter in my business - investment content for individual investors. While Twitter may be a small medium of communication today (compared with email, for example), I believe its popularity is likely to grow. After all, Twitter is really just an interface for web and SMS communications. And if we can get in on the ground floor of "tweeting" about the financial markets, that might put us in a good position down the road, allowing us to capture an active audience of younger people who are interested in investing.

We set out to give it a try with our Small Cap Investor web site. Our editor-in chief (Bob) and assistant editor (Crystal) jumped on the opportunity and have been tweeting away. Our Twitter user SmallCapTweets post 8 - 12 updates on small cap stocks throughout the day (today has been a killer, with the small cap Russell 2000 down nearly 5%).

The good thing is that it isn't very time intensive, since the messages are short, and we're just summarizing highlights from small cap stocks throughout the day. The bad news is, our following is really limited (10 followers). Granted, we've done no marketing. We plan to integrate our feed directly into our web site in the coming weeks, and to begin to encourage our audience of +150,000 e-mail newsletter subscribers to also signup to follow us on Twitter.

I'm not sure we'll ever make money directly as a result of our Twitter feed. And we're not alone: MIT Technology Review, CNN, MSNBC, and Forbes are all active on Twitter, and not making a dime (as far as I can tell).

But I really view Twitter as being an extension of our communications with our audience - yet another way to reach out and connect with them and build a relationship in the digital age. Down the road, this perhaps becomes a way for us to send stock trade alerts to paying subscribers or to promote new products or special discounts to our users.

However, right now we're just having fun.

Comments

There are no comments for this entry yet.