Berkun is now on Twitter
Just for the record, I beat Oprah to it by at least a day.
I get the point already and I’m having fun.
You can find me here http://twitter.com/berkun
Just for the record, I beat Oprah to it by at least a day.
I get the point already and I’m having fun.
You can find me here http://twitter.com/berkun
I find that most people who blog about joining Twitter write a blog post that cannot fit in a tweet. :)
I think I just make it on this one – 140 characters.
As a (virtual) resident twitter skeptic, I have to ask: what’s the usage pattern for twitter in product development teams (say at Microsoft) for the people doing implementation, documentation, and testing?
In the product management vein, how to program and product managers use twitter?
Richard: I have no idea. I’ve been using the thing less than a week and I wouldn’t say it’s a productivity tool.
It’s mostly a way to have interesting conversations. That’s the best way to describe it.
The most productive aspect I can see is overhearing conversations about your products. If I do a twitter search for “Myths of Innovation” I can see what random people are saying about the book, which can be useful. As would be the fact that no one is talking about the book, or my product, at all.
Sarah Milstein’s webcast on Twitter for Business does a good job of giving the product feedback angle.
And here’s an event that claims to talk about twitter for product managers
You won’t find internal dev teams using Twitter since it’s all in the open. However, teams do use similar tools like yammer.com or self-hosted twitter-like solutions.
My company is experimenting with yammer and another tool but there is very little chatter between project team members. Mostly, it’s queries for ideas or info outside of your immediate group. A lot of it is interesting stuff you might find on the net with a bias towards the company’s focus.
Jay: thanks for the info.
I think yammer has the problem of everyone knows exactly who is supposed to be working, who is certain meetings, and who isn’t. Whereas twitter it’s semi-unknown.
I suspect a huge amount of twittering is done by people at work when many of their co-workers think they are working.
I agree about the twittering at work. My tweets certainly drop off when I get home. :)
However, are you suggesting team members don’t use yammer because they’ll be found out?
I think we’re finding that people do use yammer, but I don’t think it fills a need for teams. I don’t think there is anything to fill… Team members that need to communicate will choose face-to-face, the phone, IM, or email (in that order). They may also follow each others tweets, but that’s filling a more social and less professional need.
Make sense? Did I miss your point?
Jay: I think there’s more stigma about twittering with co-workers vs. twittering with non co-workers who are also at work twittering on company time :)
Also, twitter seems to work because of the volume. If you follow 200 people, 20 or so are probably on at any given time twittering. If it’s just your company, the max number of people involved isn’t big enough to have a network effect.
Anyway, I’m totally guessing here. I’ve only been doing this stuff a few days now.
Here’s another experiment with Yammer (though, not a strong opinion yet)…
http://ueblog.habaneros.com/2009/04/06/yammer-microblogging-for-the-enterprise/
Will you be paying my 10% of your royalties monthly or quarterly?