Comments on: Twitter Real-time Discussion Experiment

By: Twitter Discussion Experiment: Lessons Learned — 2moroDocs

Twitter Discussion Experiment: Lessons Learned — 2moroDocs — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:14:25 +0000

[...] Twitter Real-time Discussion Experiment [...]

By: Julie Norris

Julie Norris — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:04:49 +0000

Everyone – thanks for your comments so far. I will reply in a bit. I’m working on writing up my thoughts while they’re fresh in my mind. There are many. Whew. Just want you all to know I’m not ignoring you!

By: Ben M

Ben M — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:55:38 +0000

I observed the discussion because I follow all three of you, so this is an observer’s point of view. I agree that the 140-character limit is a problem for discussions. Many tweets were hard to read because sometimes five+ letter words were abbreviated to two letters.

HootSuite is a bit of a skewed example I think. They know that all of their users are on Twitter, so reaching out via Twitter is the right move for them. For pretty much any other product, some customer research would be in order on an ongoing, general level to see how many customers use Twitter, Facebook, etc. As Larry tweeted, go where your audience is. If only 10% of your users are on Twitter (and you’d have to take into account how heavily that 10% use it), there are probably more worthwhile communication methods.

Having said this, I think it’s a worthwhile and pertinent discussion to be having for people in our field.

By: Peggy Harvey

Peggy Harvey — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:00:30 +0000

Personally, I don’t think Twitter is a great discussion tool for the same reasons Larry mentions: The 140-character limit requires too much brevity sometimes, and it’s hard to sort things out if you have multiple people responding to the same tweets (or individual people responding to multiple tweets simultaneously). I think Twitter works best as a one-to-many tool (pushing out announcements to followers), or it can work as a one-to-one discussion tool, though it’s better to move one-on-one discussions to the DM realm so the rest of your followers aren’t bothered by it. As a one-to-many or many-to-many tool, though, I think Twitter fails.

By: Larry Kunz

Larry Kunz — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:39:40 +0000

Twitter is OK for holding discussions, but it has a couple of drawbacks: You’re limited to 140 characters (minus the length of the hashtags). And it can be chaotic when everyone chimes in at the same time.

But….A few months ago someone was holding real-time interviews on Twitter. Worked like this:
1. They’d tweet “Tune in at noon Eastern for a live interview with Sally Thoughtleader. Use such-and-such hashtag to follow and ask questions.
2. At the appointed time he’d tweet a question to the interviewee, and she’d respond in kind. Always using the hashtag.
3. Anyone could throw in their own questions just by using the same hashtag.
4. When it was all over (usually in an hour) he’d make a transcript and post it on his blog.

I was never the interviewee, always just a listener. But I found them stimulating and informative. (I wish I could remember who it was doing this. Maybe Jeremy Victor. Someone like that.)

Anyway, the interviews were kind of like what you’re doing here. Except they were more focused (panel discussion vs. room full of people talking). Still might be an effective way to use Twitter.