Twitter is the fastest growing social media tool. You can stay connected with followers between phone calls, emails, and meetings by reading their “tweets” and updating your own. This tool could have a profound impact on how technology project teams communicate.
If you don’t know much about Twitter, it’s essentially a tool to share short (less than 140 word) updates and read updates from your connections.
What does the tool make possible? At Denver’s Thin Air Summit this weekend, conference attendees twittered as presenters and panelists talked about blogging, podcasting, social media, and, of course, Twitter. Conversations ranged from detailed presentation notes, to jokes about blogs and mini-skirts, to dialog expanding on an idea started by the presenter or a participant. I’d guess (SWAG, really) that an average of 10-20 Thin Air Summit tweets appeared every minute. At one point during the conference, I glanced at the screen next to me and saw someone looking at my own Twitter profile and choosing to follow me. As a new “Tweeter”, the interplay between in-person and online communication surprised me. I witnessed online connections turning into real conversations and Twitter handles replacing business cards as the medium for continuing a face-to-face dialog.
So how can this help us collaborate on a software project? Just imagine the power of communication if everyone on your project team updated their status once per hour and provided real-time information about what they are working on or an issue they are having. And as a participant in that project you check-in as often as you want to see what your colleagues are up to. Instead of waiting for tomorrow’s stand-up meeting or, in some cases, next week’s status meeting, to get a sense of what’s going on in the project, you can stay connected in real-time with a minimum of effort.
The power of Twitter in contrast to email lies in two complementary aspects: 1) Reading tweets is more efficient than reading and responding to emails. 2) You are more likely to tweet something than email it. These aspects combine to create a discovery-enabling platform. Maybe you can help a colleague solve a problem. Maybe someone down the hall has a contact that can help you research new tools. What’s on the verge of spam in email is Twitter’s sweet spot.
What do you think? Are you using Twitter to collaborate in your organization? Considering it? Do you think it would be beneficial?
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By Laura Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is an independent business analyst consultant. She is passionate about the BA profession and is committed to contributing by supporting this blog as a forum for business analysts to build on each other's experiences. View more blog posts by Laura Brandenburg |
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I recently became a “Tweeter” and am attempting to network with other professionals in my city. The going is a bit slow, and most of the chat has not been professionally oriented, but I do believe twitter can be a powerful tool to share “on the scene” content from an event as well as for maintaining project cohesion.
Hi Linda,
Thanks for your comment. I think we’d definitely have to deal with challenges of keeping chat professionally oriented in a project environment (or at least not distractingly unprofessionally oriented).
Maybe the power of Twitter is in the gems?
There are other Twitter-like tools out there that are actually focused more towards business microblogging. One that I hear about often is Present.ly: https://presentlyapp.com/. You might want to check it out.
Glad to see that there are companies to help us overcome the security hurdles of posting business info on twitter. Thanks for the link!
Love your pictorial description.
This is a must and is also perfect for someone new to twitter instead of wandering.
I had my wandering, not sure days when I started out. If I had your short, brief and to the point tutorial, perhaps that would had been helpful when I started out.
Thanks for putting up. I enjoyed.