In article <16720fe00907040747k67ca1206kb871420deb5e8163@mail.gmail.com>, Jeffrey Lyon <jeffrey.lyon@blacklotus.net> writes
Personally, I find it difficult to take Twitter seriously. It seems like more of a kids toy than a business tool. Something like a blogspot account would make a lot more sense.
That's the kind of "marketing-led" response I was hoping to hear.
But the UK National Rail system now uses Tweets to tell customers about disruptions on the trains, and several major UK government departments and news organisations use it for announcements and "Breaking News".
So has it become "respectable" yet?
Roland Perry wrote: there are plenty of examples where twitter is being used for useful notifications. in the sf bay area, there's a user maintained version of what you describe for our commuter rail. a large example of this is comcast's customer service (see http://twitter.com/comcastcares) personally, i like the twitter idea. i can follow/unfollow at will, i can set up sms alerts for specific "users" i follow, etc. sure, twitter had some stability issues, but i think if we're being fair, they've been very stable of late. sure, twitter might be down at the same time, but it seems more likely that the website for the provider in question would be affected and twitter can be updated very quickly using a cell phone either with a twitter app or simply via sms. just my $0.02 worth (perhaps $0.03 and perhaps not worth over $0.01) +m