You are looking at Twitter with a too limited point-of-view. Remember, Twitter has also become a news source, and in terms of TIMELY news, it's becoming more valuable than Twitter. If one of the services you use is down, searching Twitter is fast becoming the easiest way to find out about it.
In this world, creating a Twitter information stream isn't about followers so much as information flow. You are a source of information when users need it.
This doesn't mean that the CEO of Zappos can't provide a great Twitter stream that people would enjoy following, but that's just one way that companies use Twitter. There are many many more.
Anne Haynes
· 10 months ago
I think companies should have twitter accounts to secure their brands. How you use twitter accounts is another story. If I'm looking for a deal, I would love a tweet telling me the product I'm looking for is on sale. I don't think you can say "yes" or "no" just yet, but testing and new applications to create segmented targeted communications are needed.
Great post Stan.
Karl Long
· 10 months ago
I think Twitter or something like twitter will largely replace email in the next 10 years or so. It scales communication in ways that boggles the mind. The main reason companies misunderstand twitter is because you don't really see the value that is created until you are participating in it. The real value of twitter comes from small niches connecting and this is not visible to most people as these niches are emergent and defined through communication.
Well, Twitter don't like Europeans either ... there is no SMS service in Europe ,,,
Mia D
· 10 months ago
Great post! I believe the key is relevancy. If it's relevant to your customer base, you better be on Twitter but to tweet just to be 'cool' isn't very smart. When it comes to business decisions, CEOs shouldn't let how they feel about Twitter, get in the way of doing what's right for their customer.
Daniel McClure
· 10 months ago
One of my faviroute corporate Twitter accounts at the moment is that of http://twitter.com/Aleksandr_Orlov which is linked to marketing campaign shown on British TV talking about the confusion between www-comparethemeerkat-com and www-comparethemarket-com. It is purely of novelty value but is clearly engaging an audience and raises brand awareness.
Other than the laughs I get from the above I don't recieve much value from following most big business other than the occasional support ticket and notifications on services I use.
Kenneth
· 10 months ago
I work for a fairly small Norwegian organization. We do have a Twitter account, but we just got started recently. Twitter is not something being used very frequently in Norway, so for now our Twitter account is just in an experimentation stage. http://twitter.com/Skattebetalerne
Jof Arnold
· 10 months ago
What a load of rubbish. I don't know a single European tech CEO who DOESN'T tweet.
Not all of them tweet all the time though - often we're too busy having 3 hour lunches, sobbing over our measly exits and spending all evening drinking ale and red wine in the "pub"...
Or so the US tech press would have everyone believe.
Ramine Darabiha
· 10 months ago
(If you're on Facebook, we're talking on the comments about this topic!)
Interesting. I'm the CEO of a startup based in Finland (mysites.com). We use Twitter, but to be honest, we get much less contacts, coverage, visibility, or even "conversations" from Twitter. The service makes it very difficult to find people, and the search isnt even on the homepage. On the other hand, everyone we're targeting is on Facebook. The feed is easier to track, message notifications are easier to notice, conversations are visible and easy to jump in, just like this one! I'm not sure what makes you feel companies will "lose control" etc etc. From a European perspective, it's a service with few users, and not that much to offer compared with Facebook. That said, feel free to follow @mysites :P
orangeguru
· 10 months ago
I love these self centered and rather uninformed "reports" about Europe from American companies.
1. Twitter is hardly as important in Europe as it is in the US of A.
2. Europe is not as addicted to the newest trends as the US is. So the number of consumers using twitter is pretty low. Even European high-tech companies (and their employees and CEOs) lag behind.
3. The most important factor is language. Sure English is the business language for most people - but not for everybody. Do you then tweet in at least five different languages (FR, EN, DE, IT & ES)? How does the translations? And what will be lost in translation? And keeping your message "clean & sharp" in several languages according to your different marketing messages in often very different markets is a tough task ... for a single CEO.
Lacy
· 10 months ago
I definitely think that companies (if relevant) benefit from opening and maintaining a Twitter account. I manage the account for @thepearlhotel in San Diego, and have opened dialogues with a number of people through Twitter. It helps your customer feel connected and informed.
Timo Paloheimo
· 10 months ago
I firmly believe European companies should and will have Twitter accounts in the future. This is especially true to tech startups, who can really benefit from it today by networking.
It will take time before most companies see the need to be present in a social medium such as Twitter. But the day will come, when it will be as necessary as a web site is today.
If the companies do get involved they should for the right reasons. Yea the tweets about company updates and crisis management. But more to be proactive with customer service and a great way for marketing research.
Nacho
· 10 months ago
I don´t understand why. I think Twitter in gonna be the best option to comunicate something in two or three years. For instance, in the miracle in the Hudson, first new appears in Twitter, so you can see the importance of this. If the UE goverments doesn´t like is because they have fear, I think.
Chris Norton
· 10 months ago
I agree with you Twitter is a more personal tool where you can keep up with people you are interested in. Twitter is also a great source of news but it is very immediate whereas blogging can be found later in Google easily making it useful for SEO.
I think we will see an increasing number of PRs and CEOs writing tweets in 2009.
Brian Jones
· 10 months ago
The better question to be asking is, what are europeans doing that we're not? What are companies in Asia doing that we're not? etc.
We become to arrogant if we simply state: the rest of the world is not doing what we're doing, so they must be behind the times.
Brian.
Simon SC
· 10 months ago
Twitter isn't just one-sided. I use Twitter as a quick way to get in touch with CEOs of certain companies and famous bloggers. They'll generally reply to your tweet instantly (since it only takes characters of effort) and you feel much more in touch with them this way.
The advantage of Twitter is its "web 2.0"-ness. Citizen journalism, user generated content, and open forums for discussion between all sorts of people.
I might that I'm European
Suzi
· 10 months ago
Twitter can be an excellent branding tool, but to say that it is required for branding success is a bit much. I agree with Mia D in that it's all a matter of relevancy. If a company's PR expert is good for anything, they would do their research before deciding on a social network instead of jumping on bandwagons.
Jenn
· 10 months ago
I agree with Mia and Suzi - Twitter makes more sense for organizations with key stakeholders who also use Twitter. You have to know where your audience is and reach out to them there. And for a lot of companies, that place might not be Twitter.
However, I do think that any company can find some benefit from Twitter. As many others have said, Twitter can be many things to many different people. Because of that, it's worth trying out, no matter where your company is located.
johan
· 10 months ago
Techies and New Media peoples are using twitter a lot. Possible it something to do with all the different languages in europe...
We use it to keep contacts with our writing experts on www.docufacts.nl. Of course they are on Twitter too.
Andrei Potorac
· 10 months ago
I'm the CEO of Vuzum Media, and I tweet. :)
Lars Schlossbauer
· 10 months ago
Twitter is an emerging communication channel in Europe. It has not reached the tipping point to address a broad audience. It is currently a useful tool to 1. Gather consumer insights, 2. Reach a very specific target audience (social media addicted), 3. Shape the brand by using an innovative channel. From my point of view it is not the communication channel, which delivers a fast ROI. And therefore it is not on the shopping list of Brands in 2009.
Josh Gray
· 10 months ago
European Companies that don't Tweet-
These companies need to be made aware that their market share and brand sentiment will be and are directly impacted by Twitter, and other outlets of expression online. If they are slow to act then they will loose some amount of control and cost themselves valuable time.
I believe the overarching concept here though is just that savvy companies and brands, European or otherwise should be aware of the conversation that is occurring within as many social groups, networks, micro blogs and Tweets as possible.
Feel free to follow us on Twitter: @Perfspot
We Tweet!
James from Babyspot.com
· 10 months ago
WOW! That is crazy...Twitter is huge for monitoring your brand ad connecting with your audience! It's all about transparency between you (CEO or Co-Founder) and your brand. Twitter is changing the way we communicate these days...
Anyways this is my twitter name : jamesatbabyspot
Guillaume
· 10 months ago
Well following a brand might be really useful: with twilerts I can get all the relevant tweets from Gumtree (a UK site for flatshare) for a special area. Honestly I will follow someone from a company and that could be the same feeling than a blog: I could tell what they are doing, the projects, the decisions, etc. I think it depends a lot more on the use on it and not of if it is a company or not.
Josh
· 10 months ago
While I AM enjoying Twitter, I think it's only a fad. It resonates with so many of us that used to use chat when the Web was just beginning.
In a way, it's like a P-Diddy song: You think you like it, because it resonates, but it's just because the sample is already familiar to you.
I'm currently writing my bachelor thesis about business use cases of microblogging. I found several reasons that (esp. big) european companies don't use twitter.
1. The don't know the tool 2. Language (esp. for Germany and France) 3. They've hierarchies upto ten levels, it's not easy to get innovation bottom up. 4. They see no or to less impact in social media in general!!! 5. Only a few european ppl using Twitter (ca. 1Mil?) 6. They are afraid of giving out non PR conformable information 7. They are afraid of beeing attackable in public and lots more....
Nearly the same reasons corporate blogging took so long to has been established. My company introduced crop. blogging last monday. 80.000 employees world wide, users today: 23 :)
This is the best "state of the art" discription I've found:
"Most people don’t know what wiki’s, blogs or social networks are either. When explaining Jitter, one user was even worried that this meant that all the SMS text messages they sent to anyone would now be published on the Intranet. These technologies are natural and well known to people like us, but for the vast majority of people in the world they are new, confusing and weird." (Wallace 2008)
Corporate tweeting, never gonna happen. Will get bought out by someone in 2009 - it has to, they can't survive. It's like everyone was supposed to get on Facebook, yet Facebook on a corporate level, not happening. I added people over the years and then when I really started to use it I found I used it to connect to friends that were no longer local and deleted anyone not in my circle of friends. Corporates won't waste time on it after the initial buzz has worn off and why should they? There are many better mediums to coonect with their clients.
I can confirm that here in Italy most corporates don't even know what Twitter is. Management aware of social media importance knows just two or three tools, like Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin. By the way, they don't have any idea about how to use them in a marketing point of view. I'm pretty sure that here in Italy (and in Europe) things like Twitter will be considered by management once they'll be so mainstream to be impossible to ignore...
Dan Taylor
· 10 months ago
Hmmm. Sad to see that Forbes got this one a bit wrong. One word - Twesitval. A London based idea. And europe doesn't love twitter? huh?
valugi
· 10 months ago
twitter is as shallow as its users.
SBO
· 10 months ago
I think it's very easy to judge about the European media acceptance while not living there... Companies over here choose the technologies to invest in later than in the US, because they want to know the ROI first.
Can you already tell us the ROI of your twittering or do you just have some nice conversations and tweets and a lot of time lost at the end of the day? Most German CEOs are thinking more practical – you can't tell them to use Twitter without illustrating the monetary benefit.
By the way I know a lot of techies and none of them uses Twitter. Only some of the PR and New Media people spend their time twittering. Have a look at http://przweinull.de/ there you can see the blog and twitter of a big German PR agency.
But to be honest: Imho it's just an other pig beeing chased around the house – like Secondlive a while before. Time will tell if anybody still speaks of Twitter in a few years.
Maxime Khan
· 10 months ago
The point is, that this whole Twitter thing is not understood at all by most people I have talked to in Germany, yet. I have a Twitter account and tested it and just don´t see whats sooo great about it??? I read all this fuss and stuff and plugins and all that about Twitter on a daily basis, but I just don´t get the benefit of it.
I would really like to know just how exactly this can benefit my company, but maybe we are so focussed on our stuff that we cannot connect on this level?
Hendrik M
· 10 months ago
I see it like many other Europeans here, we don't buy into hype easily. Before we decide on something, we wanna know what's our ROI - or if at the end of the day we just wasted an hour valuable working time.
Maybe its something for tech and start-up companies, but I am quite sure there isn't much sense in it for a, say, manufacturing company or a bank. So if you wanna connect to the tech companies, yes, speak their language and tweet. But otherwise your time can be spent better.
Shtirlic
· 10 months ago
Spending time to improve company products quality is better than tweet with customers. Twitter is nice tool in some way for personal use.
Name
· 10 months ago
Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!Ha!
Another VERY STUPID AMERICAN don't like to know the european companies are stronger than others.
YOUR MOM LIKE OTHER UGLY AMERICAN WAS FUCKED BY DOGs, then you are born.
Ha!!
Couch potato
· 9 months ago
Do you know how many Europeans even Twitter? I wonder if it is worth it for European companies (yet)...?
Christian Renard
· 4 months ago
My personal experience is that, 6 months after, nothing has really changed so far. But Twitter is viral ,wiring and so damn simple. Smart sales people will use it with clients/prospects. It will also help "marketign" communities staying active.
Ngoh
· 3 months ago
Its slowly beginning to change as some try to figure out how to adapt twitter to European settings. You may want to check out this link about using twitter in Europe. http://tinyurl.com/o668h6 cheers, rev.
All Comments
@SondreB
In this world, creating a Twitter information stream isn't about followers so much as information flow. You are a source of information when users need it.
This doesn't mean that the CEO of Zappos can't provide a great Twitter stream that people would enjoy following, but that's just one way that companies use Twitter. There are many many more.
Great post Stan.
http://twitter.com/karllong
Other than the laughs I get from the above I don't recieve much value from following most big business other than the occasional support ticket and notifications on services I use.
http://twitter.com/Skattebetalerne
Not all of them tweet all the time though - often we're too busy having 3 hour lunches, sobbing over our measly exits and spending all evening drinking ale and red wine in the "pub"...
Or so the US tech press would have everyone believe.
Interesting. I'm the CEO of a startup based in Finland (mysites.com). We use Twitter, but to be honest, we get much less contacts, coverage, visibility, or even "conversations" from Twitter. The service makes it very difficult to find people, and the search isnt even on the homepage. On the other hand, everyone we're targeting is on Facebook. The feed is easier to track, message notifications are easier to notice, conversations are visible and easy to jump in, just like this one! I'm not sure what makes you feel companies will "lose control" etc etc. From a European perspective, it's a service with few users, and not that much to offer compared with Facebook. That said, feel free to follow @mysites :P
1. Twitter is hardly as important in Europe as it is in the US of A.
2. Europe is not as addicted to the newest trends as the US is. So the number of consumers using twitter is pretty low. Even European high-tech companies (and their employees and CEOs) lag behind.
3. The most important factor is language. Sure English is the business language for most people - but not for everybody. Do you then tweet in at least five different languages (FR, EN, DE, IT & ES)? How does the translations? And what will be lost in translation? And keeping your message "clean & sharp" in several languages according to your different marketing messages in often very different markets is a tough task ... for a single CEO.
It will take time before most companies see the need to be present in a social medium such as Twitter. But the day will come, when it will be as necessary as a web site is today.
BTW, I wrote about the Finnish companies using Twitter:
http://www.startupbin.com/2009/01/12/finnish-co...
I think we will see an increasing number of PRs and CEOs writing tweets in 2009.
We become to arrogant if we simply state: the rest of the world is not doing what we're doing, so they must be behind the times.
Brian.
The advantage of Twitter is its "web 2.0"-ness. Citizen journalism, user generated content, and open forums for discussion between all sorts of people.
I might that I'm European
However, I do think that any company can find some benefit from Twitter. As many others have said, Twitter can be many things to many different people. Because of that, it's worth trying out, no matter where your company is located.
We use it to keep contacts with our writing experts on www.docufacts.nl. Of course they are on Twitter too.
From my point of view it is not the communication channel, which delivers a fast ROI. And therefore it is not on the shopping list of Brands in 2009.
These companies need to be made aware that their market share and brand sentiment will be and are directly impacted by Twitter, and other outlets of expression online. If they are slow to act then they will loose some amount of control and cost themselves valuable time.
I believe the overarching concept here though is just that savvy companies and brands, European or otherwise should be aware of the conversation that is occurring within as many social groups, networks, micro blogs and Tweets as possible.
Feel free to follow us on Twitter: @Perfspot
We Tweet!
Anyways this is my twitter name : jamesatbabyspot
In a way, it's like a P-Diddy song: You think you like it, because it resonates, but it's just because the sample is already familiar to you.
Microblogging may be here to stay, but it needs to have more specific functions, like games, or polling. More thoughts on this: http://yournewweb.blogspot.com/2009/01/fun-and-...
1. The don't know the tool
2. Language (esp. for Germany and France)
3. They've hierarchies upto ten levels, it's not easy to get innovation bottom up.
4. They see no or to less impact in social media in general!!!
5. Only a few european ppl using Twitter (ca. 1Mil?)
6. They are afraid of giving out non PR conformable information
7. They are afraid of beeing attackable in public
and lots more....
Nearly the same reasons corporate blogging took so long to has been established. My company introduced crop. blogging last monday. 80.000 employees world wide, users today: 23 :)
This is the best "state of the art" discription I've found:
"Most people don’t know what wiki’s, blogs or social networks are either. When explaining Jitter, one user was even worried that this meant that all the SMS text messages they sent to anyone would now be published on the Intranet. These technologies are natural and well known to people like us, but for the vast majority of people in the world they are new, confusing and weird." (Wallace 2008)
Source: http://www.e-gineer.com/v2/blog/2008/10/jitter-...
Please follow me and I might tell you what I have for dinner.
https://twitter.com/hostnexus
Companies over here choose the technologies to invest in later than in the US, because they want to know the ROI first.
Can you already tell us the ROI of your twittering or do you just have some nice conversations and tweets and a lot of time lost at the end of the day? Most German CEOs are thinking more practical – you can't tell them to use Twitter without illustrating the monetary benefit.
By the way I know a lot of techies and none of them uses Twitter. Only some of the PR and New Media people spend their time twittering. Have a look at http://przweinull.de/ there you can see the blog and twitter of a big German PR agency.
But to be honest: Imho it's just an other pig beeing chased around the house – like Secondlive a while before. Time will tell if anybody still speaks of Twitter in a few years.
I would really like to know just how exactly this can benefit my company, but maybe we are so focussed on our stuff that we cannot connect on this level?
Maybe its something for tech and start-up companies, but I am quite sure there isn't much sense in it for a, say, manufacturing company or a bank. So if you wanna connect to the tech companies, yes, speak their language and tweet. But otherwise your time can be spent better.
Another VERY STUPID AMERICAN don't like to know the european companies are stronger than others.
YOUR MOM LIKE OTHER UGLY AMERICAN WAS FUCKED BY DOGs, then you are born.
Ha!!
You may want to check out this link about using twitter in Europe. http://tinyurl.com/o668h6
cheers, rev.