Convincing clients about the commercial utility of social networks is always a crucial part of our education process. Many people initially think networks like Twitter are solely used for meaningless babble about breakfast choices and weekend plans. For instance, one client recently summed up the goal of activities on the social networks he was beginning to use with one word: LinkedIn got “network,” Twitter got “play.”
So I was particularly intrigued when I came across an interesting tool today that could eventually make it easier to tie real business value to Twitter. Twit2Tel is a service that allows for Twitter users to make 4 minute phone calls to other users of the service for free. In theory, a business could send out a message about their services or promotions on Twitter, and members of their community could call them directly to discuss the contents of the message. The new contact mechanism would reduce the barrier to developing a lead based on interest in a message, and would be a great way to start more substantive, in-depth conversations based on interactions on Twitter.
The users must be signed up for Twit2Tel, however, so the company will have to overcome a user adoption curve before it can demonstrate real viability. The calls also come with the catch of a 15 second recorded advertisement that subsidizes the cost of the call. It’s hard to imagine a business wanting its customers to use this platform to contact them, if there is a chance a competing product could be advertised directly before they made a connection.
While these caveats to Twit2Tel’s platform will keep it from being used by many businesses in its current form, I think the concept is a sound one that should be explored with more thought about how business users can get more value from it. Businesses would be willing to pay a reasonable fee to use Twit2Tel or a similar service, if its user base became large enough to predictably generate several phone calls with potential customers per month. If Twitter itself were to offer a feature similar to this, it would gain wider acceptance and could be a path to monetization for the company.
To expand Twitter’s use as a business tool, solid concepts like direct-calls from Tweets should be explored in the context of facilitating business interactions, as well as consumer viability.
