LawsonGuru Blog
Thought-Provoking Commentary for the Lawson Software Community
All A-Twitter ‘Bout Nothin’
It seems the whole universe is “tweeting” about something, and we, as a culture, just can’t get enough of it:
- Some celebs have exceeded 1 MILLION followers, and that makes the “news”. Gee, pardon my lack of excitement.
- Senators and Congress{men|women} tweeting during Obama’s address to Congress. Have they forgotten about decorum and manners?
Sure, I understand the attraction of Twitter for certain segments. It does just fine for those celebrities followers who can’t live without Inside Edition, and have their love/hate relationship with the paparazzi. And, naturally, our youth has latched onto it (no surprise there), just as they did with Facebook, and MySpace before that. All in the pursuit of more friends and followers, I guess. [Disclaimer: Yes, I do watch my son’s twittering].
But as a business tool? I don’t think so. Check out this stream of recent tweets (from an IT industry icon, no less):
I mean, seriously, do we really need to alert our “followers” every time we do something? Sure, we don’t have to follow, but might we miss out on some great pearl of wisdom?
Lawson even used it at CUE 2009 to give us exciting updates:
In my view, Twitter is simply the next iteration of blogs and RSS feeds, and yet another way for us to waste our time, and feed our ADD. So for now, I think I will remain the only person on this planet for whom this is just another internet fad, and won’t be joining the twitterverse.
Until, of course, I have 5000+ followers who ask me to…
LawsonGuru Blog 
Yes, I think that many people ‘overtweet’ and I can’t say that I spend too much time reading others’ tweets. Still, I do like the ability to reach an audience quickly with (what I hope are) meaningful updates about what I’m doing.
Hmmm… no business value? I am not sure if I agree w/ that… yet.
The innovation simply may not have translated into a sound business concept yet. When you consider what happened to email w/ 80% of inboxes being spam, maybe this is a next generation notification concept and parallel to email – not necessarily twitter but maybe a business function like twitter. I could sure use a tweet when a server goes down or a critical piece of information comes in. I wouldnt count this out just yet.
BTW: Just had a great lunch at Champs in downtown Minneapolis.
Sorry – I couldn’t resist!
Cheers John.
e
e-)
See, I’m not the only one 🙂
John – that WAS hilarious!
But hey… in 1980 the question was why would ANYONE have a computer in their house?
In my house we probably have no-less than 8.
Maybe all inventions that can be invented have not all been invented… yet.
🙂
I agree that there are still inventions to be invented, just not sure if Twitter is one of them 🙂
This is a worthwhile reading. In this case, UPS, was able to serve it customer.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_09/b4121030584631.htm?chan=magazine+channel_in+depth
I have listened to many podcasts on the Twitter topic, I was un-convinced though, there is mass scale business value in twitting.
It will be another fad that will be soon forgotten
An interesting post on this topic:
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2009/05/the-great-rss-versus-twitter-debate.html
I just can’t leave this alone… While I am writing, I am working on a large collaboration product for Best Buy/Geek Squad. They use Digital Concourse as part of an educational platform for grades 6-12… Anyway… We are adding more “Twitter” like capabilities and direct integration to twitter so that you can tweet or… err… Dweet from either side.
My point is first, I am actually impressed w/ the value of basically the ability to simply follow someone, the very simple 1 level thread (vs message boards), and the notification. Is this the new replacement for email and IM? Not sure yet.
However, I do believe the next generation of workers will come to expect these types of capabilities and will use them how they work. We must think of the next generation of users to really appreciate what is happening here. For me, I am not ready for retirement and I do believe there is truly something here. Time will tell.
e-)