Twittering attempts have been put on hold

Apr 16 2009 by Phil Renton, The Journal

I HAVE just returned from holiday where I visited a friend in Dubai who was extolling the virtues of Facebook.

He has not been in Dubai long enough to make acquaintances, so each night he sat in his apartment and swapped inane banter with “invited friends”. I called him sad and lonely with no friends – possibly a bit harsh, but justified I think.

My view of social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace was that they catered for the younger generation who constantly need to text or send instant messages – my default position on the issue was to dismiss these sites as a complete waste of space.

To add to my woe, along comes Twitter and the so-called Tweeters.

However, there is a bandwagon rolling which is urging us to take a wider view of this phenomenon and discover the business benefits which can be derived from using Twitter. Although most of the focus has been on the celebrity side of Twitter – with the likes of Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Philip Schofield getting a lot of attention – eventually this will die down and real business opportunities may emerge.

In the IT channel, vendors and resellers are using Twitter to inform potential clients about promotions, products and snippets of news. Twitter can also be used to drive users to your website and as a tool to find out customers’ opinions.

My head is being well and truly turned. I started to think that those who shun this latest communication trend could face problems down the line – if you don’t buy a ticket you can’t win the lottery.

I decided to create a Twitter account and report back on my success. So I clicked on Explorer, typed Twitter into Google and thought that this could be the beginning of something great. Then disaster struck “ERROR 403 Access to this site is blocked during office hours”. In our organisation we are always alert to abuse and misuse of the internet so I am pleased to see our internet police are on the ball. I’ll let you know in a couple of weeks how I got on but right now I feel as though I need to go and stand outside the headmaster’s office.

Phil Renton is managing director of Newcastle-based Croft Technology