5 reasons why your boss will let you use Twitter at work

To quote Wiki­pe­dia:

Twit­ter is a social net­work­ing and micro–blog­ging ser­vice that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 char­ac­ters long) via SMS, instant mes­saging, the Twit­ter web­site, or an applic­a­tion such as Twitterrific.

140 char­ac­ters is not a lot of text, so gen­er­ally these updates are writ­ten in response to the  ques­tion “What are you doing?”, though many people are now using this micro format to share links to longer art­icles and blog posts. Twit­ter and Jaiku sup­port web feeds and SMS updat­ing via mobile devices.

Twit­ter is cur­rently strain­ing with grow­ing pains as a res­ult of its recent pop­ular­ity; occa­sion­ally the serv­ers lock, or don’t send updates, while Jaiku is oper­at­ing pretty smoothly without any issues. If you can’t decide, you can always integ­rate both of them by using TwitKu — a cool mashup present­ing both your Twit­ter and Jaiku accounts on the same web page.

So, why, you may ask, would your employer allow you access to a social net­work? “That’s not work, it’s social­iz­ing!”, he says. You link to your friends, it’s kind-of like Instant mes­saging, and that’s fire­walled, so why should Twit­ter (and Jaiku) be con­sidered work-permissible resources? Here’s your ammunition:

1. Net­work­ing - Twit­ter and Jaiku allow you to develop and main­tain ‘light’ social rela­tion­ships with people, who could be industry thought-leaders, sup­pli­ers, developers or con­tract­ors. For example, do you want to know what Scobel is doing at this moment? ‘Fol­low’ him in Twit­ter. Posts often describe cur­rent pro­jects, or maybe what they had for lunch.
2. Per­sist­ence - Google and the other search bots crawl Twit­ter and Jaiku. Do a Google search on bgrier and Twit­ter and you’ll find my ‘tweets’ (as Twit­ter posts are called).
3. Know­ledge - There’s noth­ing like know­ing what Steve Rubel is think­ing and play­ing with at the moment. You have that know­ledge almost instantly by ‘fol­low­ing’ him. Find other thought lead­ers, fol­low them, and it’s almost like you’re inside their head.
4. Early Adop­ter — Twit­ter and Jaiku are really new social media. You’ll see a few art­icles here and there, but by get­ting famil­iar with this micro-format tech­no­logy now, you’ll be bet­ter able to under­stand the role of it, and advise its use in your organization.
5. News - Since you’re lim­ited to 140 char­ac­ters, posts tend to include the URL of longer art­icles or posts. This format is a great, email-free way to send out news updates, gather opin­ion, update stake­hold­ers, or even request help.

Here’s two recent and cool examples of Twit­ter that I was following:

• Fol­low­ing one Twit­ter hav­ing a baby
• Help­ing a stranger buy cow­boy boots in Ottawa

Tech­nor­ati Tags: Twit­ter, Jaiku, Social Media, Micro Format, Microb­log­ging, Blog,