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Gartner's Twitter recommendations for businessesTwitter is aimed at personal users, but Gartner says that companies must wake up to the positive implications of employees' tweets, which are to their own advantage. As businesses struggle to consider the uses of microblogging platforms, such as Twitter, in the workplace, Gartner last week highlighted four ways in which organisations are using Twitter. "Despite the fact that Twitter is primarily aimed at individual users in the consumer market, many of those individuals work for companies and 'tweet' about business issues, leading businesses to explore how they could best use it," said Jeffrey Mann, research VP at Gartner. “Public forum”"In general, Twitter usage by employees should be covered by existing web participation guidelines," Mann said. "As Twitter is a public forum, employees should understand the limits of what is acceptable and desirable. It is good practice to remind employees that the policies already in place apply to this new communication forum, as well. If organisations have not defined a public web participation policy, they should do so as quickly as possible." Twitter allows users to post short, 140-character updates, on what they are doing right now. Users distribute quick thoughts, news and ideas, and this broadcast element of Twitter has led this type of service to be called microblogging, as each individual message (called a "tweet") can be considered a very small blog post. Users select other "Twitterers" to follow or receive their messages in close to real time. Gartner analysts predict that, by 2011, enterprise microblogging will be a standard feature of 80% of social software platforms on the market. While other consumer microblogging platforms exist (such as Plurk, Jaiku, and Identi.ca), Twitter is the most popular. Four different waysTwitter is primarily aimed at individuals, so it is not imperative for every corporation to be actively participating at an official level. However, the popular impact of microblogging is leading many companies to explore how they could use it. In addition to the individual use of Twitter, Gartner has identified four different ways in which companies are making use of the Twitter application: direct, indirect, internal, and signaling.
Additional information is available in the Gartner report "Four Ways in Which Enterprises are Using Twitter", available at www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=911714&subref=simplesearch. Additional insight into social networking will be discussed at the Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit, taking place 8 - 10 June in Orlando, Florida. A complete agenda can be found at www.gartner.com/us/pcc. Members of the media can register by contacting Christy Pettey at . |