Graubart's '5 questions' talks Twitter
Jinfo Blog

5th February 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

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Barry Graubart, Alacra's vice president of product strategy and business development, has an ongoing feature on his ContentMatters (http://www.contentmatters.info/) blog where he asks five questions of industry thought leaders. His latest exchange, with social media consultant Laura Fitton, sheds light on the power of Twitter for enterprise use and for social change (http://digbig.com/4yfjh). Fitton sees Twitter's microsharing model as being in its infancy, with potential for disrupting email and even FaceBook usage. 'Of note, it's going mainstream much faster than email did. People love to point to Facebook and say but *that's* mainstream, Twitter is niche. True today, but it won't be true forever. There's a different culture and dynamic on Twitter, and while much simpler it's MUCH more versatile. Information and ideas do not spread on Facebook the way they do on Twitter, that's for sure.' She also talks about a pilot project she did using micropayment provider @tipjoy to raise funds for an organisation called Charity:Water; asking for US$2 from each of the 12,500 readers following her 'tweets' she was able to raise US$125,000 in short order. 'Between the Twitter community and some corporate matching sponsors, my wishes somehow came true. It was truly a "stone soup" project, with many coming together. These are tough times, and we need low-cost ways to pull together as a community and help one another through them.' Of course no matter how innovative Twitter is, it's going to need to earn some revenue at some point. The San Francisco Chronicle published an interview on Feb. 2 with company founders Evan William and Biz Stone who talked about their efforts to improve service and expand its base (http://digbig.com/4yfjj). Revenue isn't even on the radar screen until April, but the founders don't seem particularly worried: they turned down a $500 million acquisition offer by Facebook in November 2008. When a company turns down an offer that size in an economy that's still on the shrink cycle, they clearly believe they still have some tricks up their sleeve. I'm curious to know how many LiveWire readers are using Twitter as a means of communicating on work-related issues - anyone care to weigh in on whether and how you're using it, and if not, why not?

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