Subscribing to People – Not Magazines. One More Reason Why Twitter Matters
In that standout piece this was this standout line, “People will subscribe to people, not magazines”
It is the stem of that sentence – “People will subscribe to people…” – that carries so much impact. Take your pick of what follows the negative: “…not magazines”, “…not newspapers”, “…not corporations”
I found myself again thinking of that line at a presentation I did with Sarah Milstein, author with Tim O’Reilly of The Twitter Book, to discuss the value of Twitter for business. I opened by saying that of all of the social technologies, from blogs to social networks, Twitter is the only tool that has literally changed my life. That comment caused some raised eyebrows and I was challenged to explain.
Beyond everything that is discussed about Twitter’s value for business – how you can use it to humanize your message, direct traffic, gauge market sentiment, extend customer service and so on, there is one key element that is consistently lost. It is the element that, to me, is the most powerful of all.
Twitter makes you smarter by allowing you to subscribe to people. .
Before Twitter if I were interested in what someone like Tim O’Reilly had to say so I would read Tim’s posts on Radar. Tim might post once a week. With Twitter, I now follow not just what Tim is writing but who Tim is reading. I can use Tim as a filter – getting insight on what he thinks is important and where he sources new bits of information. I follow sociologists, anthropologists, communications experts, scientists and philosophers. Together these people help me filter the enormous volume of interesting material available to me on the Social Web. Following these people has been deeply enriching.
If you’re company is building an approach to Twitter – great. If you are focused on using it to meet business objectives – great. If you aren’t thinking about how Twitter can make everyone in your organization smarter – you are missing what I think is the biggest opportunity.
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