Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Ngoh — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:59:07 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Christian Renard — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:24:27 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Couch potato — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:38:12 -0000

Do you know how many Europeans even Twitter? I wonder if it is worth it for European companies (yet)...?

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Name — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:08:25 -0000

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!!

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Shtirlic — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:57:57 -0000

Spending time to improve company products quality is better than tweet with customers. Twitter is nice tool in some way for personal use.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Hendrik M — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:32:32 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Maxime Khan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:56:21 -0000

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 donÂ´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 donÂ´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?

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

SBO — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:45:05 -0000

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 â€“ 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 â€“ like Secondlive a while before. Time will tell if anybody still speaks of Twitter in a few years.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

valugi — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:41:05 -0000

twitter is as shallow as its users.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Dan Taylor — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:03:21 -0000

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?

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Vincenzo Risi — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:41:29 -0000

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...

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Laurence Flynn — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:02:08 -0000

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.

Please follow me and I might tell you what I have for dinner.
https://twitter.com/hostnexus

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

elcario — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:13:07 -0000

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 donâ€™t know what wikiâ€™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/...

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Guillaume — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:42:12 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

James from Babyspot.com — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:48:01 -0000

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

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Josh Gray — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:39:36 -0000

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!

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Lars Schlossbauer — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:38:46 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Andrei Potorac — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:50:17 -0000

I'm the CEO of Vuzum Media, and I tweet. :)

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

johan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:45:40 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Jenn — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:30:49 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Suzi — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:51:10 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Simon SC — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:48:03 -0000

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

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Chris Norton — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:42:48 -0000

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.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Nacho — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:32:23 -0000

I donÂ´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 doesnÂ´t like is because they have fear, I think.

Re: European Companies Don’t Like Twitter. Should They?

Craig — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:27:58 -0000

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.