Hamburg.
I skipped the final speaker in the previous session at next09 - there were major laptop problems which delayed the start by 15 minutes. So we're already in the next session, in which I'm also presenting; we start, though, with Nicole Simon, whose talk is about the use of Twitter in business.
Twitter, Nicole says, has become mainstream in the US; Germany and other countries are still lagging behind, though. This may be a function of the fact that no mainstream stars (such as Ashton Kutcher in the US) have promoted its use yet. This could happen any time, though. So,how does this affect business - what if Twitter is used to build a good company profile for a competitor, and if that competitor is poaching staff; what if news or rumours about a company spread via Twitter; what if there's a fake profile for a company; what if a company's star twitterer leaves?
Nicole references The Cluetrain Manifesto with its motto 'markets are conversations' - Twitter has made this idea incredibly relevant again. If all of a company's competitors start to engage in this way, that company can no longer afford not to participate - there are even some companies where the Google ranking of tweets about the company rank higher than the company's Website itself...
Twitter can and must also be used to listen to customers; additionally, it can be used as a sandbox for experimenting with social media, to reduce internal email, and to explore 'what if' scenarios. Nicole provides a few examples for this - some German companies are using Twitter to advertise job opportunities, to highlight upcoming events, or to promote activist initiatives.
Importantly, the tool is relatively easy to use, for almost everyone; here, people are at the centre, and the human touch is becoming more important; we're still only in an experimental phase, though, so who knows where these things may go. The big question for companies is both what can be gained by participating,and what threats there are from not taking part.
