Ask HN: Social Networks and Business?
To make sure there is no misunderstanding, they aren't a web development company; they aren't planning on building a social network. He just wants to know a bit about how they are used, in businesses themselves and as a tool to advance the business.
I was thinking about the Dell example (how they advertise sales on Twitter), and about how the "fun factor" of social networks can be engineered into traditionally stodgy applications to produce better results (I planned on showing him the beta of Thymer as an example of a twitter-like interface used in project management).
I admit, however, that my expertise is limited, especially compared to the gurus here. HN, please help me end my brush with unemployment! (If this leads to anything, you're all welcome to spend a night or two at my place if you're in Tokyo :) )
But it's more than that, Coke can actually look at what its biggest fans want. They have a 3 million strong userbase against which they can run surveys, see what the feeling about marketing campaigns is, etc.
Also, everybody who searches for a particular persons name on google will likely see his facebook page appearing. The public search listing for the person includes the message 'Coke'. This is akin to a personal recommendation from one person to another, that coke is good. This is a dream scenario for a brand.
Twitter is useful when the brand is a personality. People want to interact with brands who are personalities, and twitter offers a direct way to do so, and create personal nuance in the brand.
If you haven't already read the Cluetrain Manifesto, then you should. (www.cluetrain.com). 10 years old now but lots of good stuff about why a business should be interested in social networks.
Also LinkedIn groups: lots of people are using those as a way of getting involved in conversations relevant to their businesses - representing their companies, not just as individuals.
http://twitter.com/Zicam
There's also the sub-group of 'enterprise social networks', helping people within an organisation connect better.
Free: Twitter for Business Webcast.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1162
Pay: Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution O'Reilly Radar Report
http://radar.oreilly.com/research/twitter-report.html
The value of social media is as a two-way communication channel. With search.twitter.com it is easier than ever to hear what customers are saying and interact with them when they are struggling with your product/services.
If you provide a great customer experience you keep customers as long as your provide a great experience. If you screw up and fix it beyond their expectations you have a customer for life. (or something like that)
I hear the "Instant awareness" thing. I should probably look up an example of this before I go in though. I think I read an article about that here a while back (how Twitter is a potential competitor to Google because of its faster reaction to changes in public mood)
I don't think the customer service angle will work in the context of the company I'm dealing with. The company has certification programs and its main product is in use with banks and other large companies - I don't think the president of Citibank is going to twit about how XYZ screwed up big time. (That said, I wonder if I can explain how it might be a good way to reach out to hacker-types)
Wait, I am not sure the President would want to be on Twitter at all. However, Citibank runs ads and marketing campaigns, they have customer service, they run PR campaigns. Twitter is a tool that those departments can use to actively listen and respond to their customers.
Conversations are made public, and therefore are searchable, and they're shorter, eliminating the overhead of sending an actual email.
I actually think that there's a huge business case for setting up internal twitter systems in businesses. Being able to publicly broadcast small updates on a project via twitteresque system would be very useful.
If he's interested in setting up such a system internally, we would be happy to provide that for a small fee. :)
It's exactly that, and it's full of y-combinator goodness :) Ever since I started using it, my productivity doubled.
i.e. someone like http://garyvaynerchuk.com/
http://twitter.com/comcastcares?sess=7fd22e18b74852a62dc6659...
As annoyed as I am with my frequent service outages and the billing error, I really like the notion that I can complain publicly and have their response (or lack thereof) also be made public.
These social networks is just a kind of media (with very limited format in Twitter's case) so the content is what matters.