GALT Consulting LLC

"Twitter is just stupid."

Look... I know why you would say that.  You've looked at someone else's Twitter account or maybe even tried to start your own.  You spent your days reading tweets like "I fed my cat today and now his breath smells like cat food" and "Going to the grocery story.  Think I'm gonna buy some groceries".  Not exactly highly valuable business information.  I get that...  but those who still think Twitter is "stupid" are missing something...

Imagine sitting in a large, crowded restaurant.  There are all kinds of people eating and having conversations.  The people are family members, friends, business associates, near strangers, whatever...  Most of the conversations are what we can now call "cat food" conversations.  They are totally unrelated to anything most people really care about (probably even at a given table much less across the entire restaurant).

Yet in that crowd, somewhere, there is a conversation between 2 people in your industry talking about an important new technology or resource.  Maybe there is another table discussing you and your product's advantages and disadvantages.  If you make the restaurant big enough, there are conversations that are extremely valuable to hear.

Twitter is a restaurant with 75 million people and no waiting time.

Carrying on with the analogy, Twitter is an efficient restaurant for those who are familiar with it.  You may not be interested in most of the conversations taking place, but Twitter allows you to filter out the boring stuff.  Some people probably won't ever say anything interesting (don't follow them).  Some topics probably don't impact you (don't search for them).  But some do...  and Twitter allows you to listen in and even jump into the conversation without being rude.

I told one company about an online market research tool under development that collected real time data from millions of consumers and even allowed the company to interact with the consumers real time to get more information.  The tool is completely searchable.  How much is that worth?  It is free... it's called Twitter.

I know... you want to control the conversation.  What if someone writes something bad about you?  The truth is, and this is brutal...  THEY WILL TALK ABOUT YOU WHETHER YOU ARE IN THE ROOM OR NOT!  Buck up!  Walk in the room!

I don't sell Twitter or even consult in social media (call Steve at Heligonix for that - www.heligonix.com), but I do help businesses.  Social media is powerful and is here to stay.  Even if Twitter doesn't last, it is one of the current dominant forms of social media and it will be replaced by something better.  The technology is here.  The value is now.  The future is uncharted.

Ignoring one of the most powerful technology developments in the last 100 years just because someone uses it to update the world on their cats is... well.... stupid!

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