Since I wrote earlier in the week about PLM and social media, I decided to step up to the bat and join Twitter. Signing up for the account was ridiculously easy — which is why you occasionally see a celebrity announcing “that’s not me!” You might want to take a look at what is being Twittering in your name …
The second my account was live, I was besieged by people who want to be my friends. Nice — but oh so pointless. Several dozen people or bots must have been waiting for new accounts so that they can pounce the second they see one. It was strange but harmless. Twitter has since implement changes designed to prevent spamming (or whatever the cutesy twitter term is), so your mileage may vary.
Once an account is active, you decide whom you want to “follow.” I signed up to follow the formal feeds from all of the PLM-universe companies I could think of and paged through their recent posts. Quite a few hadn’t posted anything in a while; those with recent content mostly announced things that linked to press releases, videos or blogs. Very little of the content seemed designed to initiate a conversation, so is probably missing the "social" aspect of the medium. I’ve posted several tweets myself and am still trying to get the hang of meeting all of the criteria: max of 140 characters, interesting, chatty … it’s not easy.
Now we get to volume. Between tweets, RSS (blog and other feed) subscriptions and email, I am DROWNING in stuff. One can’t even call most of it information. I’m learning that hotel discounts for conferences I’m not attending expire at midnight, which new digital camera is HOT, that lots of people think Kanye West is a jerk (the last caused a Twitter overload). Business users are obviously still trying to figure out what their tweeps want to hear. (Yes, in Twitter, your followers are "tweeps". Very twee.)
Which brings me to the bottom line: Social media is good if it establishes a stronger connection between people or between a buyer and seller. But it’s so unstructured that I don’t yet see how a vendor selling corporate-caliber products can make it through the noise. Tuning in to specific feeds (for conferences, for example) makes sense since location and content updates can spur immediate action. I’m not convinced, though, that anyone wants to be interrupted during their day to read all of the tweets coming at them — who can get anything done that way?
I’m going to stick with Twitter, though. Follow me and we can watch it evolve together.
