Twitter is the Ultimate SmartMob – The Money is in the Collaboration February 24, 2008
Posted by John Furrier in social media.Tags: community, online advertising, social advertising, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter, web 2.0
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It’s no surprise that Howard Rheingold loves and is addicted to Twitter. I have been at the center of social networking and social media from day one and have seen tools come and go. Twitter is the real deal.
Many people don’t get it and will never get it. Where’s the business model – they cry. Many see Twitter as a geek utility – a low cost to run utility. It is clearly a solid communication utility.
Where’s the Beef people ask? Two Areas:
1) Communication and Coordination: At PodTech we did many social media experiments and one of them was implementing Twitter mobs to drive brand awareness – we used as a communication tool to create an engaged ”smart mob”. Did it work. It sure did.
2) Smart Collaboration: Another area that Twitter rules is what I call the “smart collaborative mob”. This is the Web 2.0 “holy grail”.
Let me give some examples: I have been personally using it this way for sometime in vetting out my next venture. Also, more publically take a look at Seesmic and Loic Lemur. He is actively using Twitter as a collaboration tool to build his business – I love that about Seesmic. Just this weekend Loic Lemur was going through 900 feature ideas from the community – talk about smart mobbing for collaboration. It’s open source entrepreneurship – high quality, efficient and low cost.
Twitter is one major component for Social Media but it can’t be used unless it has a community.
Where’s the big business model in Twitter?
Answer: “Smart Collaboration”
Who owns it:? Everyone
Who makes money:? Everyone and Twitter
John, I think Guy Kawasaki is also finally getting the use of Twitter with his Alltop.com project. I’m going to be trying to find ways to leverage Twitter for the BoB Awards launching on March 1. Promoting the awards and getting nominations and such I think Twitter will be a great way to do that.
Jim,
In addition to collaboration Twitter is also entertaining. I was watching TV the other day and have to say that Twitter was better entertainment.
Twitter I find is about idea signals. It has a built in social “idea guidance system” – ability to fire off idea missiles into groups and conversations. This is why Dave Winer loves it – he admits just this week that he is blogging less and twittering more.. that is a major indicator that Twitter idea machine..