Thursday, October 8, 2009
Short-term Twitter functionality horizon, possibilities
The CEO of Twitter recently disclosed some exciting new features on the Twitter functionality horizon (CBS News article). This includes plans for an embedded reputation management system, LBT (Location-based tweeting/tweets) and the introduction of user groups aimed at improving follower/followee management. He also said that they (as in Twitter) understand that things don't always unfold as you think they will on the Web. The message? They are not trying to be too clever about what Twitter should be. A related message was echoed by a Cloud Computing speaker at a recent Gartner IT symposium I attended in Cape Town in August 2009. The speaker said that in the Cloud Computing space application developers will not always know how application consumers will use their applications. This could be viewed as an invitation to us to actively experiment with the technology to see what we can co-create. You and me, the community. It's truly exciting times we live in!So what could LBT bring to our Twitter experience? Consider the following as one possible scenario. The idea: location-based real-time customer experience management. Imagine a big retail chain that monitors Twitter for LBT about its brand (could be made visible via a dashboard in the retailer's call centre). Imagine a customer service representative solving a client's problem before the client leaves the store out of frustration without making a purchase? Remember, it's easier to keep an existing client happy through great customer service than to find new clients to replace that ones you've lost. Think about the business opportunities that this could spawn?
And what additional value will an embedded self-organizing reputation/credibility management system add to our Twitter experience? One possibility is that it could help me to build a cleaner and thus healthier Twitter community, one that automatically weeds out the spammers. The principle is that I may know a twitter subscriber in person in the offline world. I then rate this person on Twitter based on my personal relationship with them. When this person chooses (for what ever reason) to follow you on Twitter you can immediately get a sense of that person's reputation as a direct result of me having previously rated the person (as well as others ratings of the same person) concerned.
Offcourse their could be many other benefits. Your thoughts?
Thanks to @ronjsauer who brought the original CBS News article to my attention.
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