Commentary

The Tweet Life

by Todd Friesen , January 23, 2009

It's 2009, and like many of you I made several New Year's resolutions that I may or may not keep. Some of them revolve around my vices. I like to smoke. I like to sleep in to the last possible minute. I like to eat food that will kill me and I like to drive too fast. Also, I'm a complete and utter Twitter addict -- a Twaddict, if you will. All the former vices are addictions I really will try and address this year. The latter is a different story. In fact, I intend to increase my addiction to 140 character "life bytes."

Now before you get all fired up and click away to something else thinking this is just another Twitter article, at least take the time to go read about the Ketchum/Fedex debacle and heed the moral of that story. If you are interested in how Twitter is replacing search, at least for this writer, then stick around.

Twitter For Local Search

I have begun to use Twitter and other-third party Twitter tools in place of traditional search for a number of things. I was recently at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. It was packed, there were multiple sessions, events and parties happening simultaneously, and it was impossible to keep track of where people where and what the hot part was. Impossible, that is, without Twitter. I set up a custom search for #asw09 that fed all tweets regarding the conference to my iPhone in real time. Ten seconds of screen scrolling later, I knew exactly where to go and how to get there. That was the passive method -- the active mode, of course, is to tweet "Where is everybody? #asw09."

The beauty of all this is that it reaches a community that is multiple times larger than your contact list in your phone. In fact, I used Twitter for at least 50% of my digital communications at the conference.

Recently a Twitter user I follow tweeted that he was in Seattle and jonesin' for some good sushi, but it was 1 a.m. He had already exhausted Yelp trying to find an open restaurant -- but within three minutes of his tweet, he had several suggestions from locals on places to go that were still open and close to his location. Twitter trumped every single local search service that night.

Twitter For Shopping And Reviews

Last year I was speaking at Shop.org in Las Vegas. I had waited too long to book my room and get the discounted conference rate. Enter search.twitter.com or www.whostalkin.com or www.twingly.com. A few combinations of hotel name plus "discount," "promotion," "code," and "sale" produced a Web promotion code that resulted in a better rate than the conference was offering.

Sure you can use Yahoo, Live, or even Google for that search -- but sifting through the results takes much longer. Twitter search is real time in reverse chronological order. You know right away how fresh that sale code is immediately. Needless to say, I check Twitter before I buy anything online these days. I also follow Twitter accounts like @delloutlet and @VirginAmerica.

Product and company reviews are also a snap to find and address what is happening today, not last month or last year. We have yet to hear of someone gaming Twitter for reviews as Belkin did when it posted a bunch of fake 5-star reviews at Amazon this month.

Twitter For News

I used to scan headlines in an RSS reader for my news, but I haven't fired up my news reader in a long time. I simply keep Twitter open on a second monitor and from time to time scan the public timeline, so it's easy to spot breaking news very quickly. I knew about the US Airways flight landing in the Hudson within minutes. I knew that the head of Merrill Lynch spent $1.2 million decorating his office and no longer works there.

These are the things I like to know; my news is largely filtered based on the people I've chosen to follow, like @richsanchezcnn, @weridnews and @mediapost.

My name is Todd Friesen and I'm a Twaddict -- and I'm OK with that.

9 comments about "The Tweet Life".

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Tim Street from mDialog, January 23, 2009 at 9:59 a.m.
Right now Twitter is great for asking your friends what's hot and what's not. It's also a great place to share what's wrong with a product or service that you have consumed. The potential problem is that as of the first of the year SEO and MLM people have moved into Twitter in droves.
I've not yet seen any to bad but I have un-followed a few people who were pitching me on their products.
The basic rule of Twitter is know your friends so that you can trust your friends and don't be afraid to stop following someone if their Tweets are not for you.
Reply

Celia Currin from WhisperStreet.biz, January 23, 2009 at 10:02 a.m.

Todd:
This is by far the best description of Twitter and how to use it I have seen anywhere. Thank you. Celia.

Jacqueline Amyot from Goodmind, January 23, 2009 at 10:07 a.m.

I LOVE the idea of using Twitter for local search! Thanks for sharing. Also, I can't believe that story about FedEx/Ketchum; particularly that they still had him present after making that comment!

Thom Kennon from Free Radicals, January 23, 2009 at 10:31 a.m.

Todd - Thanks for this. I am sharing it with all colleagues, fans, nay-sayers and Luddites alike, to give them a sneak preview into how micro-blogging services like Twitter - and their associated tools, plugins, extensions - will change the face of digital marcoms & consumer connectivity. Superb piece - keep it up.
TK

Martin Edic from WTSsocial, January 23, 2009 at 10:36 a.m.

We've recently added a real time Alerts feature to SM2 that brings Alerts based on your keyword phrases from Twitter (and all other social media sources) into your inbox as they are posted. This is a very powerful marketing tool as it enables you to respond very quickly to conversations about the brands you manage. We use it here to generate leads through responses to inquiries about 'social media monitoring', for example. We also track our competitors and participate in those conversations where appropriate. 'Where appropriate' is the key phrase: Overt pitching is spamming and will create a backlash that can negate your efforts.
This model of real time response will be the primary marketing model going forward, IMHO. It's hard to swallow for those used to a broadcast model but change is coming, in fact, it's here.

Matthew Mcgowan from ClickZ.com SearchEngineWatch.com, January 23, 2009 at 11:41 a.m.

nice piece Todd and congrats on being asked to write for Search Insider!

Steve Wax from campfire, January 23, 2009 at 6:35 p.m.

Nice piece, Todd! I read it twice.

Joseph Morin from Social Rewards, Inc., January 28, 2009 at 4:59 p.m.

Great article Todd. I think you're on to something. I remember at last year's PubCon when #PubCon became the number 1 trending topic during the show - Twitter definitely has its strongest value during a conference when you are trying to connect with multitudes of people and organize sessions and social life all at once. As far as local - definitely see a trend there and Ive been consulting search.twitter.com more than Google in recent days now that you mention it. Wow.

Joseph Morin from Social Rewards, Inc., January 28, 2009 at 5 p.m.

er...@josephmorin lol..still getting used to this ;)