Twitter is a free social networking and microbloging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets aretext-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website,Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet" since the use of Twitter's application programming interface for sending and receiving short text messages by other applications often eclipses the direct use of Twitter.
Today, Twitter is used as a full fledged marketing tool, even if the phenomenon is still nascent.
The Gartner Institute has recently published a study about the use of Twitter in companies: "4 ways to use Twitter in companies". The background question is "How to integrate the Web and the relations between companies and consumers?". Blogs; social networks (such as Facebook) and Digg-like platforms (which enable expressions of proposals from the consumers to improve services) are changing the deal.
The Twitter micro-blogging is all the more underlining the question. On Twitter, companies can insert advertising banners and personalise their Twitter page background.
The main uses of Twitter in companies, distinguished by the Gartner study are:
-Direct use: Twitter can be used as a marketing public relations channel;
-Indirect use: employees use Twitter to improve their personal reputation, promoting in parallel their society's image. Moreover, they become more familiar with these kinds of tools, and will use it more easily in their marketing and communication projects.
-In-house use: Twitter is used as a diffusion of information tool for projects and ideas shared in the company. It is very convenient to spread messages quickly to a team (above all for geographically dispersed teams).
-Vigil: fluxes of status updates on Twitter provide a rich and unseen source of information about what consumers and also competitors think about you. As a blog, it can also be an excellent tool to forestall a crisis situation, by communicating directly with the community created around the brand.
The fact remains that companies will have to reorganize the way they communicate, integrating Twitter and other social networks, as supports of many...
Esther
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