Comments on: Important People on Twitter

By: Hallicious

Hallicious — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:16:39 +0000

I really like your arguments, Kevin. One way it could work would be to set up a relationship with Twitter, whereby you give them a list of your E-mail addresses and they return a list of Twitter handles associated to each E-mail address, along with a feed of that list directly to your organization… not publicly viewable. They have done this with “the entire firehose feed” for Google and Bing.

Then your data crunchers have all kinds of awesome customer data to analyze to their hearts' content. Data that you can use to tailor special offers back to customers on an individual basis in a non-spammy way… like customized monthly newsletters.

By: Hallicious

Hallicious — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:16:39 +0000

By: kevinpalmer

kevinpalmer — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:05:18 +0000

I know what you are saying and I totally agree that listening to what your customers want and what they think about everything is more important than chasing around "rock stars". But I am just playing devil's advocate here with the use of information and the ethics around it. I just think the privacy debate and how we use the information that people entrust us with is interesting, even if what we are doing harmless it might not mean it is ethical.

Let's say for arguments sake you are a company that produces adult products and you create a Twitter list of everyone that has purchased something from you using the e-mail that they have provided you. You make that Twitter list public, John Smith doesn't want to be associated with your brand that way and didn't give you permission to do so.

Or even if you don't have it public and then choose to jump in and respond to something on your private Twitter list engaging with your customers that you are monitoring. Lets say they have like two dozen followers and then you jump into the convo, they are going to want to know how you found them and why you are connecting.

I guess what I am trying to say is even setting up this listening post and using information that you didn't think was going to be used in this way can be debated if it is ethical or not.

By: Hallicious

Hallicious — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:55:33 +0000

Kevin,

I'm arguing that it's more important for a business to find out everything their customers say about everything, than it is for a business to find out what everybody is saying about them... I'm not arguing to use Twitter as a communication channel that a customer has not opted into.

If I am a business patron and give that business my E-mail address to either create an account, or receive something for free, or get a newsletter then I am giving you permission to communicate with me in the future via E-mail. Totally agree.

If I am a Twitter user with a public feed, I've used my E-mail address to set up an account that gives the general publlic permission to find out "what I'm doing today."

I think that connecting those two identities could be very useful for both parties involved, and am wondering why the dots haven't been connected yet... ;)

By: kevinpalmer

kevinpalmer — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:05:58 +0000

The sentiment is great but there is more here that needs to be explored. The issue with that is the ethics of using that information and dropping it into social media. They gave you permission to have an e-mail relationship not to have a relationship via social media, even if you are just dropping the e-mail in and creating lists.

I guess if you made the lists all private on the down low it wouldn't be that bad but it can be argued it is still a breach of trust. I think this is a very big grey area when talking about social media. At what point is there a breach of trust?