Marketing Insights and Analysis
I had the opportunity to meet and share a few drinks with Alan Wolk last night. Alan is a bright guy who works with great brands on identifying how they explore and engage in the social media space. We got to talking about how to explain Twitter.
We’re frequently asked by non-Twitter users what Twitter is and what it’s all about. My friends understand it’s social, and typically lump it in together with Facebook, MySpace and even LinkedIn, and IM (depending on level of knowledge).
Note: To further frustrate my non-digital friends, I intend on responding to their inquiries about “What is Twitter” with a link to this post. Maybe via Twitter.
I started by explaining my somewhat sardonic classification of the systems:
- Facebook. Where I connect to the people I didn’t like in high school, college, whatever, but didn’t dislike to the point of not “connecting”. I use Facebook out of guilt.
- MySpace. Where I would do all of the above, if I were 15 years younger.
- LinkedIn. Where I connect with people I used to work with, but don’t have enough time to stay in touch. The “oh, he’s at that company,” or, “wow, he’s still alive,” social network.
- IM. Where you can be pestered in real-time.
My Explanation of Twitter
I’m extremely passionate about marketing technology and analytics. Like many marketers, I have a drive to understand why things are and leverage that knowledge. There aren’t a lot of people working in my field, and less that share the same level of passion. I know several of my peers at other companies, but being a small group we’re geographically distributed. If I try to talk about my interest areas with my friends, their eyes quickly glaze over and they drift away.
So what is Twitter to me?
Twitter is a social application that allows me to find people that share my passions regardless of location, that I would have never met previously, and engage in interesting conversation with. The supposed “what I ate for breakfast” of marketing technology and analytics may seem mundane to 99.9% of the world, but to the people that share my passion it could be of relevance.
If you’d like to connect with me via Twitter, I’m available @robsaker
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- Tags: alan wolk, awolk, explanation, facebook, linkedin, myspace, social media, twitter
2 Responses to “My 30 Second Twitter Elevator Speech”
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About this blog
Information is essential in generating good insights, but it cannot be a crutch in making decisions. The posts here are intended to explore and are not perfect, but that's part of the point.
Nick S.
May 26th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Your description of Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and IM are right on!
Doug Schumacher
May 31st, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Got a good laugh out of your socnet descriptions.
What you say about it creating new connections is so true based on my experience, as well.
It's a simple system without major privacy concerns, and the psychological barriers to connecting are so minimal.
(I'm also a fan of Alan's writing and tweeting)