Comments on: Twitter: 67% of top tech brands in someone else’s hands – or available

By: Jennifer Geisler

Jennifer Geisler — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:25:25 +0000

I see here in some of the responses a degree of cynicism about corporate use of social media to communicate to a broad audience. At Cisco, we integrate social media technologies to develop more direct two-way customer conversations. This enables us to gain feedback to drive initiatives such as EnergyWise to help enterprises reduce their carbon footprint, virtualization to create a more operationally efficient data center architecture, and the ongoing drive to spur more migration to IPv6. We noticed early on that many of the IT professionals we communicate with grew up immersed in social media. The use of Web 2.0 technologies has proven effective for us to successfully interact with these folks. For example, I’ll be video blogging directly form the exhibit floor during Interop starting May 17. I think the reality is that for many people video has become the new email. And yes, we also like to tweet, too·it works!
Jennifer Geisler, Manager of Network Systems Networking and Switching for Cisco.

By: Brian Llama

Brian Llama — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:25:48 +0000

Exactly what would a large tech company hope to achieve with their corporation Twitter presence? A little bit of PR? A little bit of tech support? Don’t their multi-million dollar efforts elsewhere also impact Twitter users, or are we assuming that those who Twitter don’t watch TV, read newspapers, magazines, or other website?
Would a continuous stream of Microsoft tweets defending Windows Vista have made any difference?
Has anyone, anywhere, ever bought a PC, a cellphone, or other expensive gadget because of a tweet?
There might be 55 million registered Twitter users, but every time I go through my lists, I see dozens whose last activity was several months ago, and even among active users, recent studies have shown that they only interact with their real friends, which means 15 followers, not 1,500, and none of them are corporations.

By: Kojenwa

Kojenwa — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:02:28 +0000

The same can be said for CNN, who recently acquired it’s twitter breaking headlines account from James Cox, the previous owner, for a tidy sum…
http://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-acquires-cnnbrk-twitter-account-with-nearly-1-million-followers-2009-4

By: Mike McDermott

Mike McDermott — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:54:06 +0000

These businesses all have more to do with their time than to chase down every sm for their brand. I would much rather Ericsson work to make better cellphones than to be available on Twitter.
That said, the marketing and legal/contract departments should have a compliance and copyright person who chases this stuff down.
I don’t see this as their failure to recognize essential technologies, but rather it provides us with a look at how much time and effort they are burning on just meeting their business objectives. I think there is a back-story here for a continued need for Social Media and Community Managers to assist these organizations. Maybe not as a full-time effort, but definitely as a revolving contract.