The value of transparency in business
You’ve got loads of brilliant
people who work at RBS.
Liberate them, get them out
there talking to customers,
talking about their work,
talking about how they’re
changing the bank.
The True MeanInG of TwITTer
what exactly is Twitter?
Twitter is a “micro-blogging” site. It’s a free service that lets you send the briefest of messages to
everyone in your network. It marries the mass appeal of blogging with speed of text messaging.
Twitter refers to these missives as “updates”; it’s users prefer the term “tweets.” Users “follow” one
another and, if they choose, receive a notification when new messages arrive. Twitterers do their thing
at Twitter.com as well as by cell phone and on sites like Facebook.
And what do Twitterers twitter about? Anything at all really, from the trivial (“I’m hungry”, etc.) to the
substantial (“wildfires are spreading”; “Hillary just conceded”).
Most recently, businesses have grasped the potential marketing significance of Twitter as a valuable
promotional tool. For example, Jet Blue listening for customer complaints (as described in Simon’s
interview).
The great advantage for leading media such as the BBC, the Guardian and Reuters etc. is that it can be
used with mobile phone technology to track breaking news from journalists and sources on the move
and they can monitor influential sources, or news on the network in real time.
By its very nature, Twitter is ideal for live blogging of an event. Sky news for instance used Twitter at the
last budget and the potential for this technology to cover high-profile events was illustrated when the
earthquake in China was covered first hand via sources who were live blogging the event on Twitter as it
happened, giving an instant flavour to news and satisfying our needs for rolling 24hr bulletins.
According to comScore, Twitter had almost three million monthly users as of June 2008, which is triple
what it had in November 2007 (this excludes mobile activity, which is a large part of the Twittersphere).
Source: CNN Aug 08
Perspectives on technology | 17
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