Anne Zelenka has a great post on the value of Twitter as a business tool:
...one of my friends needed some advice yesterday. He wanted to know how to set freelance consulting rates. Did he Google? Or Ask Metafilter? No, he used Twitter to do a people-powered search. He searched through his social network for the answer to his question.
My friend received advice that was both trustworthy and targeted. The advice was trustworthy because it came from people he knew. It was targeted because those people know him too â€" so they could take his particular situation into account when they provided tips and resources.
While I'm no fan of hourly rates that's not the point. Anne nails Twitter's value. Time and again over the last few months I've received solid help, pointers and advice from my network of trusted Twitter colleagues. For me, it is the immediacy that matters. In business we're often faced with the need to find ad hoc solutions in real-time. Twitter delivers on that need.
For business people, the next step must be:
- Find a way of taking a Twitter style service and putting it behind the business firewall.
- Capturing valuable information, aggregate and make it available for future use.
Beats the crap out of spammed email and puts an end to the need for all those Q&A forums.
As an aside, Anne loves tapas. So do I. We found that share interest through Twitter. Trivial? Sure - but that's what relationships are about, an assemblage of trivia that defines us as human. Anne and I have never met but if we do, we'll have at least one thing to talk about. How good is that?
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