Very interesting article in AdAge, http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=133509, on how Twitter was used to capture online chatter (exercising my civil disobedience against the “buzz” term) during the launch of a CPG product. For those wondering about Twitter, it is a communications platform initially established by posing a very simple question to would be Twitter users, “What are you doing?”. However, it is no longer simply a repository of daily, mundane exchanges among groups of people (though plenty of this exists). As evidence, I’d suggest any B2C consumer company with a national presence type in their corporate name on this Twitter search engine, http://search.twitter.com/, and see how many different conversations are taking place about you.
As proof positive that the platform has transformed itself into a very real, legitimate communication platform you really need to check out, http://getsatisfaction.com/. This is a service designed for companies allowing their employees to field, via Twitter, customer questions or comments. Whole Foods, Dell, Apple and the BBC are just a few of the companies using Twitter to talk with their customers.
Plenty of market researchers have already made the perfunctory (and correct) comments about the limitations or possible flaws of this Twitter “sample” so I’ll avoid the temptation to pile on. Let me simply speculate that most practitioners of market research have been involved in coporate decision making (as supplier or client side) that used a couple focus groups as the key or sole arbiter. Is listening in on few hundred conversations any more or less biased or flawed? Doubtful.
