Twitter emerging as the next big thing in New Zealand (finally).

Are you using Twitter yet? 360interactive was the first media agency in New Zealand to start using twitter, giving clients live media updates on twitter.com and through this blog (look, over there, to the right).

Last year we were telling clients to keep an eye on this developing social network tool.  We felt it was the “next big thing” that the New Zealand media had not yet heard of.

Since then it has emerged here.   Sunday Magazine listed it as hot, the Herald lifted a story from Stephen Fry’s twitter stream and put it on the front page. Of the print edition. Not just the website. You can now get news updates from APN and Fairfax’s Stuff.co.nz through twitter.

So you’ve probably heard the name bouncing around – let’s have a look and find out what it is…

Twitter is an online social networking tool, a bit like facebook and bebo.

Instead of uploading photos and playing games with your mates, all you have to do with twitter is post a text update of no more than 140 characters (also known as Tweets). In the update you are answer one question “what are you doing?”

For this reason it is also called micro-blogging. No long stories about your day, week, month etc, just short updates.

The updates can be quite mundane – “John is heading off to a meeting with APN” or funny (particularly Stephen Fry’s) “A kakapo tried to shag the back of my leg. Mark was roughly shagged on the back of his neck. It’s mating time for kakapo: anyone’ll do x 6:50 PM Jan 7th”

You don’t even have to be at a computer to post your update, you can send a text message (if you’ve set it up correctly).

How the social networking comes into it.
Other users can follow you, linking to your profile and get your messages as you update them. On the other hand, you can follow other users and get their updates.

Once you start getting the hang of it you can share links to interesting articles with your network or message individuals in the network directly.

Application for business
Well as I said earlier, news organisations are now using it to reach consumers. Overseas, travel agents are using it to send out last minute offers and universities have used it to give prospective students a running commentary on a real students daily activities. Oh and someone called Barack Obama used it to to help win himself a new job.

If it’s good enough for Barack…

Subscribe to our twitter feed here

Here’s  a great link, 10 commandments for twitter
Drop us a line to ask how you can use twitter for your business