Life, Possible 140 Characters At A Time?

What the hell is a tweet and why on earth do we need it?

That simple statement sums up most everybody’s first impressions of Twitter and it’s strict 140 characters or less status’s or updates.  What can I say to all my friends and followers that I don’t already say on Facebook.  And why would anyone want to follow me anyway?  Come to think of it why would I want to follow any of my friends?

Unless you happen to be friends with Nelson Mandela or Richard Branson there doesn’t seem to be much point checking what all your friends are up to every minute of the day.  But this is where people’s opinion of Twitter starts to change, because it’s not only setup for you to follow friends, but more importantly for you to follow the individuals or organisations you find most interesting.  It’s a mini news service from the people you actually care about getting your news from.  By adding these respected and interesting people to your feed you can create a network that includes whomever you would like to include.  How exciting…

The twitter platform, created by Jack Dorsey is now considered the SMS of the internet.  By limiting posts to 140 characters it solves one of the largest problems with the internet.  People’s limited attention span.  With a huge amount of content on the web people’s attention spans are at an all time low and quick bites have become the way to grab your share of this attention.  An average tweet only takes a few seconds to read and can therefore be readily consumed by busy internet users.  By learning to say what you need to convey in under 140 characters the potential amount of people the message can reach will multiply.

Now with easy access to Twitter from mobile devices the platform has become the world’s largest platform for sharing real time data.  This could be in the form of business information, sports scores or emergency procedures during natural disasters.  With businesses taking advantage of this and building large followings branding through Twitter is now one of the premier communication channels for marketing.

As Twitter continues to mature a fine line is beginning to be drawn between what is acceptable and what is too much advertising or self-promoting.  The backlash of the latter can be brutal and damaging to an already established brand.

So as you setup your twitter account and choose who to follow, just remember that these big and popular feeds are being followed by millions and therefore the people on the other end are very careful and methodical about how they use the 140 characters.  Takes a bit of the fun away, but it’s a far cry from everyone’s first impressions of sending each other tweets about that mornings flavour of oatmeal, or whinging about the guy next to you on the train.

McIntyre, D 2009, 'The Future Of Twitter', Time, 29 May, viewed 9 December 2012, <http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1901188_1901207,00.html>

How Your Mobile Device Is Creating Unprecedented Opportunity

It’s 8:15pm and having cleared away dinner I’m sitting down to watch a movie and enjoy my well earned time off… well that’s what I thought until once again I give in to temptation and check the emails on my iPhone.  Three minutes later I’m on a call to a client in China who’s having issues with one of our products with another two emails to be replied to when I finish with the call… Some might think this is not normal behaviour, but for many this is becoming just another average Tuesday night.

But while more and more people are complaining about not having privacy (Sharwood 2012) or stringent working hours, a select group are instead discovering a new kind of freedom not previously possible without the extended connectivity mobile devices and social media networks are offering them.  

Welcome to the world of the remote worker…

Mobile Devices + Undefined Working Hours = Remote Workers

With easy access to the internet and social websites through phones, tablets and laptops the remote worker is able to keep in touch with employers, co-workers and clients from anywhere.  Whether this means being able to stay at home with their children, travel the world while working or living in a cheap economy while working in a richer one these workers are trading defined working hours for freedom of location.  Something that would not have been possible without the immediate connections these mobile devices allow us to have through social media.

With work responsibilities becoming more and more fragmented a recent survey showed 54% of business owners believe the majority of their workforce will be working online by 2017 (Orsini 2012).  Which means mobile devices are only going to become more important and integral to daily tasks.  

But one major issue companies currently have with remote employees is the difficulty in managing an employee you rarely see (Ewbank 2009).  To work around this issue we may see in the near future a shift towards more video style conferencing in mobile devices.  With iPhones facetime feature now working with a WiFi connection (Apple 2012) meetings can be held face-to-face (though still through a screen) on a regular basis, and other devices are quickly following suit with their own conferencing applications.

Is It Time To Change?

Whether you already have the ability to work remotely or are currently sitting in an office booth it may be time to re-evaluate the way in which you communicate with clients.  For me that means being available in the evening to work through problems with overseas clients, but on the other hand I’m now able to watch my nephews karate class on a weekday morning.  With mobile devices continually becoming more evasive in our lives you too may soon be in the position where your working hours become more diverse and unattached to an office environment.  

Now grab your phone, kick back on the couch and go check those emails…

Ewbank, K 2009, ‘Remote Working’, SoftwareKnowHow.info, 2 January, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://www.softwareknowhow.info/Buyers-Guide/Remote-working/103>.

iOS: Using Facetime, Apple, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4319>.

Orsini, P 2012, ‘The Great Shrinking Office? More Companies Hire Remote Workers: Survey’, CNBC, 14 June, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://www.cnbc.com/id/47815587/The_Great_Shrinking_Office_More_Companies_Hire_Remote_Workers_Survey>.

Sharwood, A 2012, ’10 Ways Smartphones Are Destroying Our Lives’, News.com.au, 19 November, viewed 2 December 2012, <http://www.news.com.au/technology/smartphones/ways-smartphones-are-destroying-our-lives/story-fn6vihic-1226519813913>.