An interesting piece ran in today’s NY Times on the use of Twitter as a market research tool. While many cringe when the marketing world opportunistically jumps on a new trend, I happen to think there’s plenty of room under the social networking mushroom for everyone - corporations, consumers, grassroots organizations, and more. As to whether I think such tools are of value for market research - most definitely.

Admittedly, I was an early skeptic of Twitter and Facebook status updates as a personal communications tool - what can you really get across in 140 characters that’s of any value? But, like a lot of this web 2.0 stuff, you need to try it before you judge it.  I soon found that, while a single Tweet or Facebook update was insignificant on it’s own, the aggregate of these messages over the course of a few days/weeks/months actually gave me a pretty accurate and rich picture of someone’s lifestyle, their priorities, their dreams, pet peeves, etc. More so than the odd phone call or email every few months.

And, I’ll bet, more so than many surveys or focus groups.

April 14, 2009

Putting Twitter’s World to Use

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

SAN FRANCISCO — The first reaction many people have to Twitter is befuddlement. Why would they want to read short messages about what someone ate for breakfast?

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