Twitter is increasingly helping journalists
to pick up and follow stories, but the media is not the only sector
to benefit - IT professionals can get just as much out of
tweeting.
The hype around the social networking tool is
reaching new peaks, but
Jeffrey Mann, a Gartner
analyst who specialises in web collaboration, says a little
over-reaction doesn't mean it isn't
useful to business.
He says IT staff can use it in much the same way as
other business professionals - boosting their own public profile,
keeping up with recent developments in the sector, and taking part
in the day’s debate.
Techno
talk
And the medium itself means IT staff are more
likely than those in other sectors to have an enthusiastic online
community waiting for them.
Mann says a lot of techies and geeks use Twitter,
so many discussions are technology-related.
The potentially huge audience of Twitter means your
posts could reach a massive number of people. As a result, users
often steer clear of posting highly personal information and
instead use it as a forum to explore and develop their ideas and
opinions.
“People use it to keep track of people they meet at
conferences, bloggers they like, and things like that,” says
Mann.
“But they are not asked to do it by their
companies - it is not a part of their job, it is about getting
ideas out there and getting their name talked about. A lot of
people are hesitant to post personal things. It tends to be
somewhere between personal and professional.”
Get in the
know
IT workers can use Twitter in the same way
journalists do: to keep up with what is going on, what is new and
which companies have announced a new product or the latest batch of
redundancies.
It is often used as a signalling device, so users
generally have to sift through the entries, find what is relevant
and may have to do more work to corroborate what is being said.
Mann says, “Things may not be discussed in depth,
as it is more like chatting. Things pop up, and people start
talking about it. There is a lot of volume and noise. You have to
pick out what is important, then take steps to find out what is
really going on.”
A useful
tool
It can be helpful when there is little
communication over a certain event or topic - as users of
Salesforce.com found when the site went down recently.
And plenty of
IT’s highest profile figures are on Twitter, so it is a good
way of keeping up with the industry’s big thinkers. And it could
even be a way of becoming one of those big thinkers, says Mann.
“It helps to build up your own profile and become
known outside the boundaries of your company. It could help find
you a job and it contributes to your personal brand,” he says.
Get
involved
It may be worth getting involved now, if you are
not already. Mann predicts the hype around
Twitter is about to come to a peak, before dropping off next
year.
“It is reaching the top of the hype cycle. It is
probably going to peak soon. It is useful and fun, and you can see
some benefits, but we are already beginning to see some
alternatives such as Yammer,” he says.
“It will start reappearing in other forms. Big
companies and vendors are likely to introduce their own, similar
sites, to use it in a more controlled way with a smaller number of
users.”
What the IT
professionals say
Victoria Baker, an IT designer and
consultant working mainly for the museum, education and social
media sectors:
“Twitter is useful for me in some ways as a
networking tool, but in other ways as a means of controlling my own
information flow.
“Our jobs change all the time, and there are
aspects of working within this industry which can be quite
isolating.
“With Twitter I am able to follow people I admire.
They offer an insight into areas of communication and technology
which I may have missed, and in return I can pass on information or
tips.”
Doug Hazleman, director of the global
systems engineer group for Veeam Software, says Twitter is popular
with virtualisation staff:
“I work for a vendor in the virtualisation space
but I am technical and I communicate a lot with IT professionals
around virtualisation.
“It seems to me that IT professionals in the
virtualisation area have picked up on Twitter more than other
groups. It may be because virtualisation is new technology, but
there are a lot of blogs and people using Twitter to post
information.”
Rik Ferguson, a senior security advisor at
Trend Micro, uses the tool to keep up to date and build his
profile:
“I use it to keep in touch with technology
journalists and their stories, and I let them know when I have some
information they might be interested in.
“I also listen to people tweeting about malware and
security-related issues they may be having with their home PCs and
offer advice where I can.
“I also use it to keep track of security-related
research by experts in the field and to keep up to date with the
constant developments in the information security/cybercrime
worlds.
“Finally, I use it socially. I want to use it to raise the
profile of Trend Micro, both in public perception and with the
media. If that has any knock-on effects on my own profile, that is
great. It is great for networking with peers in the security
industry.”
Useful
links: