Twitterville Notebook: The Power of Listening

I've had my head down this entire week talking to people in writing the first 10,000 words of Twitterville, leaving me about 65,000 more to go. It's a nice chunk and I feel like I am starting to get into a rhythm and have "found my voice," one that sounds very much like the voice of Naked Conversations.

I've already interviewed over 30 people in these first three weeks. I will try to post some interview notes over the next few days. I am also grateful to more than 50 additional people who have had suggestions for me on content and issues to cover. Already, Twitter and social media have helped me to write a better book.

One issue seems to have run continually through these conversations. It is not one of great surprise, but the strength and consistency of it is stronger than I expected It really has been part of every interview I have conducted so far.

"Twitter's business advantage is more tightly tied to it's listening capability than it is to speaking.  Every business person I have talked with has emphasized how fast and direct it is to finding out what people think. It is allowing company after company to listen to complaints and respond. Twitterville is serving as a corporate watch tower, not unlike a Forest Ranger lookout tower. From there, companies are seeing the first sparks of discontent. They are able to deal with those sparks before they ignite into a raging firestorm.

I heard this from people at Dell, Ford, Pepsi, Comcast. I saw the damage not listening as I researched a story of how U-Haul has blown it. I witnessed it in watching potential customers turn angry in the Motrin Mom story.

The second key lesson so far, is the speed of incidents. Stories that would have unfolded over weeks or months now seem to begin, surge, ebb and become resolved in extremely short times, often less than a day.

The closer I look at Twitter, the more excited I get about its conversational powers. I can't wait to see what I learn next week.

Thanks everyone for all the help.

Comments

[frank]

Congrats on the progress Shel! Getting started and finding the groove always seems to be the toughest part.

I get more out of "listening" on Twitter than any other tool I use. RSS may be 2nd in line to Twitter, but a lot of times I find that I've been to a specific blog post because someone tweeted it before I saw it in my RSS reader.

__
http://twitter.com/franswaa