web ennepuntozero (n>1)

Do you know why Reuters, BBC, CNN, The Matrix, Borat, SXSW , Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Techcrunch, Firefox, Beijing  International Airport and many more use Twitter?

Do you like twittering? I do, and I think it’s very interesting for many reasons. And why twittering?  “Because even basic updates are meaningful to family members, friends, or colleagues—especially when they’re timely” (twitter team in their corporate site)

Here are 3 short stories about Twitter – hope you like them.

First story is really huge:Twitter beat traditional media in reporting China earthquake.  People in China send “twits” about the earthquake before traditional media. Here is the full story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080514/tc_afp/uschinaitinternetmediaearthdisastertwitter

Second Story: Do you know that Twitter can save your life?

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone on Twitter: “Arrested”. Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted that he was being held.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/

Third story: Sometimes Twitter can be dangerous too.

Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital runs a very popular blog called www.micropersuasion.com (this guys is great, I check his blog everyday). One day he twittered this: “PC Mag is another. I have a free sub but it goes in the trash” – meaning that PC Mag (at least the paper version) was not very useful to him. http://twitter.com/steverubel/statuses/26737381 Then? What happened?

• PC MAG is an Edelman client

• A twit CANNOT BE DELETED

• A lot of people read Steve Rubel’s blog and reacted to his twit

• PC MAG complained about the bad PR he made

• Over 40.000 post in thee blogosphere about this diplomatic incident within few days

• Steve Rubel nearly had to resign from Edelman. (He did not, but he apologized with PC Mag here)

So, how can we leverage this service?

If you have to update in real-times fans or clients, (think about contest, unveiling a new product, event, celebrities party) maybe  this is a very clever way.

Sources:

What is Twitter? A nice video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o (By the way guys at www.commoncraft.com are very good at easy explanation of complex  phenomenon ). Here you can find metrics: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/02/twitter-web-traffic-around-world.html. Brands, people and institutions that use Twitter:http://twitter.pbwiki.com/NonHumanNonIndividuals . 100 top followed: http://www.twitdir.com/index.php?top=topfollowed&auto_update=on&search=