One of the things I’m working on at the moment is the embracing of Twitter where I work. Social Networks are something that Local Authorities don’t really do a great deal to embrace historically – though this isn’t across the board and there are some great users of it.

When originally we were talking about pushing out our press releases, news and events via sites – Twitter wasn’t something that many people had a great deal of knowledge about. I found myself in the envious task of explaining Twitter and its pro’s and con’s to a number of colleagues. One question in particular made me smile and stutter as I hadn’t really thought about it prior to the meeting:

Why would people want to use Twitter?

I’m not sure those were the same words, but the sentiment was that. It’s not that they were sceptical about change, nor that they wanted to try and trick me into a corner – it’s just that it’s a very logical question. Why would anyone want to use Twitter? It’s not a technology that isn’t already out there, but its certainly not got a single rival in existing technology.

• SMS / Text Messages – These exist in similar format to the limited characters, although almost all modern phones make it easy to send longer messages, it’s not their purpose and people generally keep it short. However, these cost money and sending them to all your friends is even more expensive.
• Email – People tend to ramble-on in emails. Instead of keeping to the point, they elaborate and expand upon points and (much like a blog) they aren’t used to convey the same type of information as Twitter.
• Facebook (etc) – Arguably, it’s similar to the Facebook Status, but without the 3rd person tense and indeed, the requirement to talk about how you are feeling.

A few very key points that Twitter does that other software doesn’t – decisions made that stand it aside from others.

• Friendship isn’t always mutual. This is a big difference. If JoeBloggs23 starts to follow me, I’ve no requirement to follow them back – I don’t even know them! It doesn’t stop them from following me though. This means that I (or the Council) need not accept friendship to all these people. It’s not something I want to get into a great deal of effort debating, but there are people that the Council would not want to be seen as ‘following’, but there is no harm in them following us. Touchy subject
• It keeps things short. People can’t write essays (they can link to them on their blogs – though people don’t need to follow those links and read the blog post). It forces them to chose their words a little more carefully than maybe they would.
• It’s not personal – it’s micro news. This is only slightly different from my first point about friendship, but worth its own point. While the system is built for individuals, it allows organisations to simply tag along and become pushers of news. The sigma of being ‘friends’ or ‘a fan’ of a Council might be hard work – but just following for updates isn’t that bad really. It’s not something that people would be that worried about.

At the moment, Twitter is still in the world of the tech-savvy and has yet to branch into the general population (if it ever does). But make no mistakes, it’s here and it’s popular alright. It’s a valid and worthwhile means of communication, financially too when you consider how little time and effort it takes to promote things that you are already promoting anyway!

But the true test is still not complete. When my mum starts to follow me, I know then that Twitter is indeed truely mainstream…

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