How a company use #twitter to monitor issues people experience with their product in order to enhance it

This morning, like every morning, I've started my day reading the news. Not the newspaper, but the news from the blogs I follow. Actually, I first read my emails and eventually reply to some of them, and then I read the blog posts that seems to me interesting. I'm following roughly 100 blogs. I just browse the subjects of the tens of posts received during one day, and open only those that seem to me interesting. Maybe 4 or 5, not more.

Twitter is running as well. That's not the same usage at all. It's just there, running in the background all the time, and doing little sounds and displaying a message from time to time on my screen for few seconds. I do not pay attention to most of the tweets received. But some times, I read one, and some time also I reply or re-tweet one. Some tweets are sent directly to me (they contain "@thibs" in it) and then I pay them the same attention as if it was an email or an instant message like on skype or jabber.

This morning, as I was reading a blog post on the new Nimbuzz application for the iphone, I've decided to give it a try and install this voice-over-IP client on my iphone. I feel it very interesting, and as I know that a lot of my friends following me on twitter have an iphone, I decided to tweet what I was actually doing:

thibs
giving a try to #Nimbuzz VoIP client on #iphone

Twitter is like a loudspeaker. With short messages. Everybody can actually listen to your tweets if he decides to. Some persons decide to follow you and receive all of your tweets, usually because they know you in a way, even only from your blog for instance. And some persons use twitter to search tweets talking about a particular subject. Like "iphone", or "Nimbuzz". Because they want to know opinions, thoughts, rants, experiences, "what it is said about".

That's what I did when I wrote "#iphone" and "#nimbuzz" in my tweet: I've put tags. I should also have written "#voip" actually. I've given a sens to my tweet by tagging it "#iphone" and "#nimbuzz": I'm talking about the iphone and Nimbuzz. This way, one can search people experiencing Nimbuzz on iphone by using twitter search service and find this message, with a lot of other messages.

So, yes, interesting ideas can be collected from this messages broadcasting service that is twitter. Of course, a lot of people use twitter to say "I'm taking my breakfast ". That's noise. Well, actually, if this noise is coming from someone you are following, it is not noise. You are following him because you know him. And because you are likely to feel interesting that he "is currently taking a good breakfast". If this noise is coming from a search mechanism on twitter with "breakfast" as the search query, then it is not noise either! It's a search result. So, who's saying there's lot of noise -- uninteresting messages on twitter? Let people say they are currently taking an amazing breakfast, if they like to.

This morning I said, I've given a try to Nimbuzz. Nice application. Anyway. I've sign up a new account, add my skype account to it, ICQ and jabber accounts as well, etc. And, I've tried to add my home phone VoIP line to it as well (I've no regular phone line at home because France Telecom sucks. So, my ADSL box is hosted by my neighbour. Wifi does the rest). It should have worked. I don't know why, but it didn't.

Like everybody, I'm part of a community (several actually!) composed of persons from my family, friends, relationships, colleagues, people, whom I share similar experiences and interests with. If I'm feeling interesting to give a try to this application, hopefully, someone from this community will feel it as well. The same way, I can count on this community to have people that have the same Internet provider than me.

So, being experiencing a problem with this application with my VoIP provider, I've decided to tweet this following message in order to receive maybe some help or some similar testimony from people of my twitter community:

thibs
can't manage to make #nimbuzz work with Free (french ISP - freephonie.net) #VoIP

The tags are saying: "I'm saying something interesting about nimbuzz and voip". Please understand : it is not interesting because I put tags on this message, it is interesting because people who would search for people talking about nimbuzz and voip would feel this message interesting.

I've received no answer so far from any of my followers on Twitter.

But I've received this, few hours after my tweet:

nimbuzz
@thibs Thanks, got your message, will respond today #Nimbuzz #VoIP

Yes, this company, Nimbuzz, is actually listening to people messages about Nimbuzz, and use twitter as a channel to detect issues with their product, in order to enhance it.

Note: I've not sent anything to them saying I'm experiencing problems with their product. They've just found it.

Thanks guys to have caught and answered my tweet. Now, I'm waiting your next message @thibs

My next tweet will be:

thibs
blogging about how @nimbuzz guys use #twitter to monitor issues people experience with their product - http://dexhian.net/blog