“If you’re trying to hide from your customers, don’t use Twitter.”

Increasingly, corporate giants like Comcast, PepsiCo, JetBlue Airways, Kodak and others are beefing up direct communications with shoppers through social-media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The popular social networks have helped companies quickly and cheaply reply to consumer beefs, answer questions and tailor service and goods. It has bolstered current consumer services, easing the load on call centers and expensive mailers that most customers don’t like anyhow.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and online software services like LiveOps, Salesforce.com and RightNow Technologies are all are getting used to improve customer service, keep users and gain a competitive advantage. As more corporations effectively use social-media tools for customer care, it is also becoming better to shift customer-relations resources to the U.S. and feed into the growing “homeshoring” trend. Home based employees are now becoming a trend among companies that take advantage of improved technology, gain productiveness from staff no longer tied to long commutes and leverage the experience of local employees. Several companies with vast call-center operations overseas plan to shift some jobs back to U.S. soil.   The advances in technology will allow companies to create virtual call centers staffed with veterans, the unemployed, college graduates and retirees, working from home.

Twitter allows companies to see in real-time what their buyers think, and they can learn a lot from that.  The greatest benefit of Twitter is “listening for the point of need”.  Finding out where the company could do something to fulfill that need.  Our short experience shows that people express their needs more on Twitter than on any other social network.  This is understandable, since you can quickly jot down a tweet, whereas a letter or even an email takes much more time.

The more ways you provide customers to get in touch with you, the more likely you are able to satisfy them.  When you show your customers that you are willing to listen to them, you create loyal followers.  For most people call centers are too maddening, with long waits and inexperienced, bad-English speaking agents.  Email is too slow in an age of instantaneous online communications. This doesn’t mean that call centers are a thing of the past though. Twitter is for basic troubleshooting and can be used as an addition to the traditional phone support.  Many people are still like to call on the phone, mostly because they haven’t even heard of Twitter.

Twitter is a preview of the third generation of the web, where we are communicating in real-time. The first generation of the Web was rather static. It was mostly about companies displaying their products and services on web pages. Individuals started creating personal websites, but they too were static. The Web was used for publishing and a lot of screen scraping was done to cut and paste from other websites so you could fill your own.

The second generation of the Web, the so-called ‘Web 2.0’ was already more interactive. With the advent of Web services, the web became a more connected place. Companies now had to show much more interaction with their customers and started using the social networking media like MySpace and Facebook, to set up a dialogue with their customers. Individuals were using these social networking media to connect with their friends and to keep them posted on what they were doing. Everywhere you could see ‘wikis’ being set up and individuals started blogging about a wide range of subjects. This created a web where you could follow what was going on in a certain niche and take part in the discussion.

The third generation of the Web is about to break loose. Here we take one step further than interactive, we go real-time. Here the Web is just there… connecting everything and every body. We will see real-time interactions between devices and people are juicing a gigantic stream of data that everybody can jump into. Surely people will still be concerned about what happened in the past, but this generation of the web is about what’s happening now.

Twitter gives us a glimpse of what this the third generation of the Web could be like. It lets us communicate in near real-time, but it resembles a stream of information we can dip into.

Many things that happen in the world are reported on Twitter first. When that plane landed in the Hudson River early 2009 a guy called Janis Krums was on the ferry picking up the first survivors. He took a picture of the plane and tweeted this to the world. When the elections in Iran in June 2009 were over, the world learned from the many tweets from Iran that there were violent protests against the election results. When the protests started, the regular news media like CNN did not pick this up for hours. This in itself caused a big discussion on Twitter (#cnnfail) about the role that the regular news media should be playing, where what is happening on Twitter is taken into account. The issue here is: can what is tweeted be trusted by the news media or is further investigation required. The answer is a difficult one, but one thing is clear “ the truth is more seen than read”, so anything that is documented on video or photos, can be trusted more than what is just written.

As Twitter becomes more popular and is featured on the news as providing information about real world people issues about identity arise. Treated as an information source it is hard to verify that people twittering are actually who they claim to be, even more so than Facebook which uses email identification, at least for colleges.

News sources can be seen as vetting the identity of Twitter accounts by featuring them, we assume they have done their research, but this is not always the case. It is hard to know what is going on at the non-celebrity level, if people are playing pranks on each other with twitter, or more serious issues have arisen.

There are a wide range of reactions by famous people to finding a Twitter account claiming to be them. Folk singer Kimya Dawson decided to create one of her own after it came to her attention there was an impostor. There are numerous Stephen Colberts, some of which just drop quotes from the show others which actively pretended to be him and interacted with fans until they were found out, but not by Colbert, who doesn’t have any interest in the issue.

On the other end of the spectrum, pop musician Momus found his Twitter doppelganger amusing, as it fit into his ideas of postmodernism and authorship. For each entry in the real Momus’s LiveJournal, known as Click Opera, Twit Opera provides a pithy and sarcastic summary.

There are more serious cases reported by the news media, involving more than musicians and television actors. Financial institutions have had problems with Twitter impostors, Bank of America investigated an account claiming to be an employee, and many brands are concerned about possible bad reputations developing from fake accounts that are perceived as real mouthpieces.

For any corporation information control is a serious issue, so it is likely not a drastic change for them. Politicians would be in the same boat, well versed in dealing with public relations and controlling information, but they are usually not as good with technology, since typically they are respected for their seniority. In Alaska veteran Republican congressman Donald Young quickly acted to shut down his Twitter impersonator, however.

And with technology so comes law. A lawyer has already stepped up to specialize in Twitter impersonation cases, sending desist letters to Twitter and the errant account holders and filing legal actions if necessary. So watch out what twitter accounts you trust, a little investigation clears up most doubts, and also watch out who you fake, you could be sued!

Hashtags is an advanced, but easy-to-use Twitter feature. The reason they are called hashtags is because they start with a # symbol. Here are some examples: #rejectprop8, #dragmetohell, etc #rejectprop8 is a hashtag that people used when talking about Proposition 8. Users can put “#rejectprop8″ and then other Twitter users can easily find their tweets by looking at all the #rejectprop8 tweets.

Many Twitter applications, mobile and desktop, allow users to find hashtags. Some applications call them “trends” instead of “hashtags”. Most applications will keep track of the 10 or 20 most popular hashtags at any given time, so it really lets you see what people are talking about at any given time.

When the movie Drag Me to Hell came out last week (05/29/09) in the United States, many Twitter users began talking about it, and the #dragmetohell hashtag quickly jumped to the top of the Twitter top hashtag list. When looking at the #dragmetohell hashtag, I found tweets about the movie. Some contained links to reviews, some were just tweets about the user going to the movie that night, some were tweets suggesting that their friends should go see the movie, etc.

Many celebrities that have a lot of followers are very good at starting trends a.k.a. hashtags. They will post about #something and that #something will become very popular in a short amount of time. Many of their followers will begin talking about that topic and it will become widespread very quickly.

Another advanced feature is “re-tweeting” and if celebrities re-tweet tweets from their followers and those tweets in turn contain hashtags, the topic’s popularity will in a sense compound. For example, when Blink 182 member Mark Hoppus began posting about #rejectprop8, he also re-tweeted some tweets that his followers sent about #rejectprop8, and that in turn boosted the popularity of the #rejectprop8 hashtag. Soon it was at the top of the list, and Mark tweeted about how he was amazed how fast it climbed to the top of the list.

If you’re tired of reading the news to find out what’s going on, consider checking out the Twitter trend lists. Apps that let you easily follow the trend list are Twitterific, Tweetie and Twittertrend.

TIP: To make a schreen capture of your iPhone, simply press and hold the “Home” button at center bottom of the iPhone, then press and release the “Sleep” button on top right of the iPhone. This causes the iPhone to “flash” white briefly and the image is added to your “camera roll” on the iPhone!

What makes Twitter particularly interesting is the variety of mobile Twitter application on the iPhone. All of them offer different features, and each tries to stand out from the crowd by offering its own assortment of Twitter functionality.
My favorite of the applications I have tried, is Twitterific by “iconfactor.” It offers the most attractive user interface and is by far the easiest to use. Runner-up, in my mind, is Tweetie, which offers a little more functionality but is not quite as easy on the eyes. They both open up the world of Twitter to the user.
They offer even more features than the Twitter website itself! In my opinion, until somebody has used these apps, they have not experienced Twitter and will not understand why it is interesting or even worth using.
It is such an interesting way to communicate and interact with others. Even celebrities! Celebrities love using Twitter because they don’t have to “be friends” with other users like similar social sites would require, such as Facebook or MySpace.
What is challenging about Twitter is that it limits what you want to say to 140 characters, and even text like web links are included. So if you include a web link, you’re pretty limited in what you can say in your “tweet”. That is why a myriad of URL shorteners has sprung up, to make your web liks as short as possible. TinyURL was one of the first to offer this, but their name is actually too long…I use http://csd.nl – works great!
A rare feature in Twitter iPhone applications (even the official Twitter site does not offer this) is the ability to see a list of tweets that were written about any particular user. Reading these tweets is often very interesting, especially if they are written to a celebrity. You get to see how normal people would talk to a celebrity, and you can see how the celebrity responded as well. Some Twitter applications allow you to see conversations (or “threads”). This is another advanced feature that not all Twitter apps offer.
A lot of people are talking about Twitter lately. But Twitter works best when people are just using it rather than talking about it. If people talk about it without using it, it could be in danger of becoming a fad.
I personally think that Twitter has a bright future. There are so many improvements and innovations that could be made. When the day comes that I can record a video with my iPhone and then post it on Twitter for all my followers to see instantly, I will be in geek heaven and will more than likely abuse that feature.

Up to the moment service details: Twitter can function like a real time search for airlines and others. As an example, JetBlue (@JetBlue; over 730,000 followers) actively answers traveler questions about flight times, delays and weather updates.  They are using Twitter as an early-warning system.

Starbucks is employing a mix of social media thru Twitter (@Starbucks; over 240,000 followers), Facebook (3.2 million fans) and its own social-networking site (http://MyStarbucksIdea.com) for product concepts and feedback. Splash sticks, the corporation’s new plastic plugs for sip holes, were made in part thru feedback from their customers.

Thru social-media forums on Facebook and Yahoo, PepsiCo asked buyers to go to its DEWmocracy web site and vote on one of three selections for a new Mountain Dew flavor. More than 350,000 voted last year.

Online communities to exchange comments: Facebook and MySpace offer bulletin boards for clients to weigh in on leading brands. Dunkin’ Donuts actively manages a fan page on Facebook with over 825,000 fans. It made use of the page at length to complement advertising and email to tell consumers on a new range of sensible food and an iced coffee day event in April 2009.

Harley-Davidson’s company profiles on MySpace (36,000 friends) and Facebook (175,000 fans) let it solicit comments from their loyal buyers and produces videos of its motorbikes on YouTube. Harley uses Twitter (@HarleyDavidson) to tie it all together.

The creation of Internet communities has prompted some of the traditional Customer Relations Management (CRM) software companies to tap into this resource.

For example Salesforce.com is helping 6,800 firms including Comcast, Dell and Starbucks build online communities to solicit buyer recommendations on ways to improve operations.  RightNow Technologies has created a social-media tracking service, dubbed Cloud Monitor, to monitor what customers are saying about brands and their products on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Market Research & Analysis:  You have a low cost opportunity to poll the Twitter community to see how people were responding to your company’s product in the marketplace. It is still too early to do some heavy data mining on Twitter. The tools to do this are not available yet and one shortcoming of Twitterer is that it only keeps an archive of all Tweets broadcasted in the last 30 days. Applications are springing up left and right to fill this void. Some are already storing data in their own database as far back as December 2007 and will allow you to retrieve information at a cost.   An example of this is http://TweetScan.com.  Another application that gives you archive data is called http://Tweetake.com. They give you a real-time query on the Twitter database in a nice CSV format that you can import into Microsoft Excel.   This service is free of charge, but is limited by the Twitter API, which only allows you to retrieve 1000 records.  For data mining today the expense probably outweighs the value, though it is a potential use worth pursuing in the future.  It would not hurt to back up your own tweets, direct messages and @replies every month and store them for future reference.

B2B Communications: Some of the most interesting and creative insights are on how a company could make use of Twitter as a quick and easy communications tool between suppliers, partners and retailers. While it clearly will not (and should not) replace a comprehensive supply chain system, it could be useful for quick status communications that don’t make sense in traditional system.  For example it could be used to signal exception cases.  This can be reported from any place interesting a very accessible and below cost device: the mobile phone.   This means it can be a report it from any place at any time which makes it really useful.

There are also opportunities to use Twitter to build better internal communications internally among employees to foster a better working environment.

Brands aren’t about ‘messages’ anymore – brands today are conversations — and today the most important conversations are happening through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

As well as the variable distribution channels, leveraging Twitter as a selling channel has another benefit for the users / customers: anonymity. Consumers can eavesdrop and follow messages without giving away their identity, email address, or any other contact info. While a selling dept may not like this ( if the mind-set is to concentrate on harvesting email addresses ), the customers will like it better and should be more ready to take part in a well planned selling event knowing that they are not signing themselves up for a future crammed with promotional spam.

For a CPG company (Consumer Packaged Goods), you could try running a competition or some other promotional program through Twitter that leverages the short-message, group-chat nature of Twitter. Send out clues and have users answer with guesses…

Sponsor a Twitter channel for something in your demographic… Sponsor a live reporter covering something interesting… Do something clever with tweets sent to your account.  It will definitely help if your products are something the tech-hipster, early adopter, social-networking-kids want. Also, bear in mind that you wish to approach with caution — the Twitter demographic isn’t keen on enrolling for spam, or having corporations attack their social scene with advertising, so you want to add value to the conversation.

Social-media tools are fostering consumer service through:

Direct sales: Dell explains it has sold millions worth of refurbished computer parts and obsolete inventory thru its @Dell Outlet account (over 750,000 followers) on Twitter since 2007.

Promotions/Marketing: An obvious temptation for consumer brands is to use their Twitter account for promotions and marketing.   A word of caution here.  You should be aware that overly aggressive marketing will backfire.   Many avid Twitterers see this as a form of spam. They can report to you to Twitter’s spam account which could cause your account to be suspended by Twitter or that they can block your account and when many users block an account again put your might suspend your account.   Unless, like @DellOutlet, you have a specific account that is used only to promote certain products, jobs or services you should be very careful to blast promotional Tweets all the time.  Remember that your tweets should always add value to the reader.  A useful tactic could be   well-defined and executed Twitter-based coupon campaign, or a prize draw with some nice incentives.

Brands aren’t about ‘messages’ anymore – brands today are conversations — and today the most important conversations are happening through social media such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

Twitter provides a way for computers and other devices to inform people about their status or their findings in a friendly manner. At this sector headquarters in California they had eclipsed a planned with a sensor that checks the humidity of the soil. Whenever is time for the planned to get some water it will post its tweet saying something like: “Water me!”

Many other devices can follow this example. What about a washing machine that warns you about not having enough soap, or detecting a colored item in the white wash or simply to inform you that he has finished his load. The ice cream truck that constantly tweets its location, is the replacement of the annoying music these trucks usually make, to alert people that they are in the neighborhood.  In New York City a moving truck started to tweet his location and availability to carry a new load, which has caused a fad, which is why everybody with a truck in New York is now using Twitter. True, it is usually the truck driver that does the tweeting here, but it could easily be the truck itself.

Gartner predicts that by 2012 20% of non-video Internet data is comprised of physical sensors reporting their status. That is an amazing prediction. Just think about how many sensors would be transmitting data.  These sensors can easily be programmed to send to tweet in exception cases, so people can take the appropriate action.  This is a usage of Twitter that has yet to be explored, but provides very interesting possibilities.