Twitter for conferences
Twitter as an application has reached critical mass to provide value as a real time ticker tape for Web 2.0 practitioners. It's effective when it mimics broadcast media... following my melange of real estate, tech and economy twitter feeds is akin to working with CNBC business news in the background.
I think it appeals to the hardcore multitasker who enjoys constant stimulus, and it's certainly not for anyone who frazzles easily. There are a lot of ways to view the device agnostic twitter. Since I'm not the garrulous type by nature, I tend to watch the stream for interesting links that twitterers find.
As a social application, it's been compared to a tech water cooler where all the home office habitues hang out. I think it works best within an enclosed social environment, like a college or corporate campus, where twitter participants need or enjoy that constant virtual camaraderie. It also works for conferences, essentially enclosed temporary groups of participants.
We're instituting the twitter feed for RETechSouth , the adhoc turned real conference in Atlanta (kudos to Matt and Brad) this Thursday. RETechSouth is all about testing Web 2.0 (in fact, we organized and collaborated on Google docs) so I'm hoping we can get everybody to sign up for a twitter account and alert the "home twitterer" RETechSouth. The home twitterer will then follow the conference participants who can broadcast their comments throughout the day through RETechSouth that will be on display on some monitor. Confusing? Imagine getting an old school Realtor who doesn't even know what a blog is to jump right into twitter as their first experience in Web 2.0. I think it's healthy to create a little shock and awe in the audience, skip over the basics and show them where the leading edge lies. They can take back a bigger picture of RE 2.0, and study it for themselves.
I can see how this could be useful for a conference where people are moving around, in and out of groups, meeting up for dinner, drinks after hours, etc.
What is not clear to me (yet), is how this tool could be usefully applied to real estate business and relationship development...
Please shed some light on this topic, if there is light to shed...
Thanks.
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As with most social networking properties, Twitter hasn't defined a practical real estate application because it requires both the agent and the consumers to be participating in the application. Critical mass of adoption hasn't happened yet.
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