I never thought I'll be publishing two posts in a row about Twitter collaboration. I guess I learned one thing. If you have a new idea, Google it. That would help you determined whether your idea is actually new or not. If your idea is old then at least you'll acquire more information on the subject to further expand it.
Back to collaborative Twitter. At the time being I have found two sites offering just that. These sites are cotweet.com and tweetfunnel.com. There is a good chance there are more sites offering similar service. I'll let Google tell you more.
I've done a small research on both sites said to offer collaboration in Twitter. In general, both sites does offer similar functionality. I refrain from going into details because Twitter collaboration only involves two major function which is enabling one Twitter user to update multiple Twitter accounts and enabling one Twitter account to be updated by multiple users. It's a many-to-many relationship.
I decided to test one of the mentioned sites; that is cotweet.com. I spent some time browsing through its features. Going from one interface to another. Clicking from one link to another. Then I signed out. My conclusion is if people want to have other Twitter users updating their account, they can use these services.
However, from my point of view, the service is not complete. Actually, it lacks one single feature that I hope would show up in such services. That is the ability for a single Twitter user to choose which Twitter accounts are available for collaboration.
Based on my experience in cotweet.com, the trigger came from the account owners. Each account owner chooses Twitter users that is eligible to update his/her account. It doesn't go the other way around. I might be mistaken but I didn't find anything close to this functionality in cotweet.com.
My idea of having a collaborative Twitter service is to enable social accounts to be updated by infinite number of Twitter users. Hence, if an account wants to have collaboration, it simply published itself as being "open". Next, other Twitter users could sign-up to collaborate in that account.
From a social point of view, collaboration means from you to you. So there is no sense of having only the owner picking other users one by one. Anyone could collaborate. Though I have to admit, if we see this from a business point of view then I agree that the owner should have a complete control of whoever is updating his/her account. If we're talking weather or traffic, anyone could collaborate. If we're talking brand images, only selected people could collaborate.
Will there ever be such social collaborative Twitter service or am I missing something?
Amir,
BalasHapusI was trying to use twitter for doing some status updates, but i was kinda confuse about how to use it. On the other side, twitter is now getting hotter as Internet Social Media. You have recently joined plurk.com (as far as i know), according to your opinion which tool is better compared to other?
Better in what terms, Dhit? You need to decide what you want to do with these services to know which one is better. In general, both has their own advantages and drawbacks.
BalasHapusI use both services for the same purpose and that is sharing. However, it differs in terms of feedback. In Plurk.com, it's easy to interact with people who comment on what you share. All of these are gathered together in a single plurk exactly like a typical blog post and its comments. This kind of interaction should not be expected from Twitter.
Twitter is getting more and more suitable for a one-way sharing. You share but you don't expect much from interaction. There is a "Reply" feature but its more like replying an email than a thread. Users who could see the replies are those who were mentioned in the replies.
That is all I can say for now.
I heard that twitter.com has a very good method for publishing some information in other way i haven't heard that plurk.com could do the same thing as twitter.com could do.
BalasHapusI read at some article related to online marketing strategies about popping up your brand into the internet and some article mention about twitter.com but none of them mention about plurk.com :D.
Or maybe they were designed for different purpose?
As I said in my previous comment. Twitter is more suitable for a one-way sharing. Looking at the design of Twitter and how most people use it, I think Twitter is suitable for broadcasting purpose. That's why it's suitable as an alternative for online marketing strategies.
BalasHapusAmetis for instance could use Twitter to broadcast (share) updates on its projects or anything public. People could reply to Ametis account in case they need to have or want to share feedback. This is what I meant by "replying an email".
Twitter are good for things I mentioned above, Plurk is not. Maybe they were designed for different purpose, but still both of them are naturally about status updates. It's the people who use them that decides what Twitter or Plurk will be today and in the future. All the articles that you read is actually a reflection of what Twitter provides and how its users interact with the service.
That is all.