Score 1 for Twitter and Amnesty International

I've always been a bit down on Twitter because I could never see the business benefit of the technology. Sure, it's great for telling everyone that you're "Leaving work now" or "I hate my boss" or "What about those Dragons? Did you see that last goal?" but I could never see how it systematically fed into a corporate bottom line by increasing profit or cutting costs. People spoke about marketing by Twitter and I tried to imagine hordes of housewives descending on the local shoe store when they were tweeted "All women's shoes 40% off for two hours" but that picture wouldn't work for me. If this was the future of communications then I was sticking with Lotus and UCC.

I'm glad to say a penny has dropped (and if I put this with the penny that dropped about LotusLive last month then I'm getting wiser and richer at the same time).

In our R8.5 Proof of Technology seminar in Sydney this week an IT Manager from Amnesty International explained how they use Twitter to update their subscribers about the various campaigns that they run and suddenly it all made sense. When your PRODUCT is actually those small bites of information then Twitter gives you the ability to fulfill your customer's 'purchase orders' rapidly and at very low cost. Who needs a monthly snail-mail newsletter when you can feed your subscribers the information as it happens? Not everyone will have the same type as "product" as Amnesty International but "When the shoe fits, Tweet it!".

You can sign up on the Amnesty Australia twitter link here.

Now I'm going to find the next Penny before it drops... where's that Facebook site? Oh dear, I need to enter my bank account details and password first? Well, if you say so...
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