In addition to the many uses Twitter has (e.g share resources, communicating within a tribe), Twitter is an evolving tool that continually surprises me on its usefulness - and I have found some more this past month.Twitter binds a community together via an event by collectively learning and commenting on what is happening live. This past week, i attended two conferences in which we used a hashtag to keep track of tweets for the conference. Not only did it help keep relevant quotes and main points fresh in the mind of tweeters, it helped give useful feedback to conference directors. One example of collective learning is a colleague who noticed that I tweeted a quote (tweets with conference hashtag were displayed at the beginning and end of main sessions) that he wanted to use for future work and can now find it on Twitter. Another example are conference attendees lobbying conference directors to invite a keynote speaker for next year's conference.
Twitter communication to the crowd can be very effective. A colleague needed quarters during a strategy session and said he would believe the power of Twitter if he gets quarters if someone tweeted his need. Within 10 minutes, a fellow conference attendee appeared with quarters for him. He now reactivated his Twitter account.
Twitter increases customer service. I stayed at a Westin hotel and my wife and I noticed cigarette smoke smell wafting into our room. I called front desk to report it hoping they would track it down. After a second call, they sent someone to the room to confirm the smell - but their explanation wasn't convincing.. I tweeted the incident using the hashtag #westin and within 20 minutes, i received a reply from @Starwood Buzz, the organization that owns Westin hotels. They asked me to direct message where I was staying to them. Within 10 minutes, the express service manager called me to see if things were resolved. At that time, the smell subsided. But when the smell came again later on that evening, they sent 2 engineers to check it out and found out our neighbor was smoking inside the room. As a result of missing the cause the first time, the on duty manager sent us a card and a fruit plate - a nice personal touch to an apology. What a great use of Twitter for enchanted customer service.
Twitter helps me find lost items. In the rush of things, we left our camera bag with the camera and expensive lenses inside. After a futile search, I finally tweeted asking if anyone in our bus saw a bag left behind. A team member did see it and was about to get but then security stepped in and claimed it thinking it was a security threat. Andrew called me to tell me security got it and I immediately contacted lost and found and sent them an online message (hooray for free wi-fi at airports). They are now couriering our camera back to our home.
What other useful applications you are finding Twitter is useful for?
Photo credit: 7son75
