Social Media Mavens / Experts

I think Twitter is a game-changer for movies.

Last night Iron Man opened here in several theaters around DC, and most of the Tweets getting thrown around were by folks eager to head to the theaters or trying to meet up with friends at the advanced screening of the Marvel movie.

Within seconds of the movie finishing, the reviews came pouring out - nearly all positive, at least, according to Summize, where a quick search aggregates all the Tweets about the film.

We experienced a taste of this when Cloverfield finally came out after an immensely successful viral marketing campaign. Fans who had desperately clamored to see the premiere instantly shared their reviews and opinions - many of them less than glowing - on Twitter, which resulted in a big opening day, but a quick fall-off.

And it’s that instantaneous feedback that will begin to shape the success of films. If it’s a winner, then the Twitter crowd will only help ticket sales on opening weekend, which is really the only weekend that counts. If the film is a dud, then the studios have even less of a chance duping moviegoers into even checking it out, as Twitter users have effectively killed the lackluster movie before it even had a chance.

So, Twitter. A “microblogging tool.” A way for you to tell the world what you are doing, right this second. (or at least your friends who want to know). Admittedly. when I initially read about Twitter in the SXSW web coverage, my first thought was “Who the heck would want to always tell everyone else what they were doing all the time? And who the heck would want to know that?” Then, after about 30 seconds, I slapped myself - gently - and thought “IT Support organizations, that’s who!”

Picture this scenario. You have a support team of 10 that handles incoming calls, and also provides deskside support to the main corporate site that the team resides in. Usually, you have three people performing deskside, with the remaining seven handling the phones and email. The typical daily chaos ensues. Nobody is sure where the deskside support folks are, or when they’ll be back, because they haven’t been seen for 40 minutes and didn’t leave a post-it note describing their whereabouts.

In addition, you have four third level support folks who are supposed to take warm transfers of difficult support calls from your front line staff whenever time and resources permit. It’s a pain to hand off support calls off to this team, because each of your first level support staff have to play “IM roulette” to see who is available to take a warm transfer, interrupting your third level support staff multiple times an hour with an endless barrage of IMs; and all the while your customer is waiting. What this situation needs is a way for everyone to see what everyone else is doing at that moment.

Twitter to the rescue. Here’s what you, as an IT manager, should do to get Twitter working for this support team.

1. Set everyone up with consistently named Twitter accounts (usernameXYZCorp, for example).
2. Get everyone on the support teams a feed reader, or an application like Twitbox
3. Get all the twitter feeds for your support team into everyone’s reader. This gives your team a consistent view of everyone elses twitter blogs.
4. Make sure you have everyone’s readers set to update often (1 or 2 minutes)
5. Explain to your support staff that you want them to be consistently updating their Twitter account with their current actions or tasks, and that it’s not optional.
6. Create a set of acronyms that support staff can use to describe what they are doing, so that sending “tweets” (micropost updates) only takes a couple of seconds.

Examples

OaC - On a call, and the estimated time until the call will end.
AfC - Available for Call
DSS - Desk Side Support visit, the name of the user being helped, and the estimated time until the support tech is back from the visit.
BR - Bathroom
Lunch - self evident
GCBMAYP - Getting Coffee, Bother Me at Your Peril

And so on and so forth.

You can also use Twitter to set up an impromptu deskside support queue, where your call takers place updates describing a needed deskside support visit. That feed can be piped to your deskside support teams mobile phones or Blackberries; letting them know about needed visits, without them having to return to their desks or call into your first level support agents.

With this kind of set up, the support team gains back all the time they used to burn trying to figure out what everyone on desk side and third level support was doing. That can be pretty significant over the course of a day.

As with any technological solution, there are pros and cons.

PROS

1. Twitter is a free service. No hit to the budget whatsoever
2. Setting up a configuration like this will take minimal time and training, especially if your people are familiar with RSS feeds and readers (and really, everyone should be.)
3. Low network and workstation resource requirements.

CONS

1. Twitter is an external service with no guarantee of uptime or service delivery.
2. Because Twitter is an external service, viewable by the public, it’s essential that proper security policies about content are adhered to. If it wouldn’t go in an email sent out to the public, it shouldn’t go in a tweet. This can limit the amount of useful information your team can send through Twitter.

Of course, a Twitter-like service would be relatively easy to set up internally, if you have people familiar with the common blogging software packages. But again, the advantage of Twitter here is that you can set it up as a proof-of-concept with minimal time investment, then change over to an internal solution later, should you get the needed server space and development time.

Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking “There are already tools that accomplish the same thing.” Fair enough. But let me ask you:

Are they as cheap as Twitter? (It’s pretty hard to beat free)
Are they as simple to set up as Twitter? (A few accounts piped to RSS readers?)
Can they be as rich information-wise while being as flexible as Twitter? (Free form text blogging with RSS feeds that can go pretty much anywhere. The possibilities are pretty broad.)

At the very least, if this doesn’t sound like a solution your support organization needs, I hope I got you thinking about how to leverage Twitter beyond basic social networking.

So, what are your ideas to use Twitter in a technical business setting?