Twitter as a work communication vehicle
March 31st, 2008 | by David |I manage a team of people scattered all over the world. I have people in Texas, Washington, California, New Hampshire, Mexico and Australia. Including contractors I have 15 people. There are pockets that work on the same applications but for the most part everyone is working on different projects or products. We have a bi-weekly staff meeting to try to stay somewhat connected and we also utilize IM heavily. However neither is doing it for me. Even though projects are separate there are usually dependencies, known and unknown. Its the unknown obviously that cause the problem. You can’t invite everyone to every meeting, though there are people that definitely try to accomplish that feat.
In an office environment where everyone is local you hear about projects over coffee or at lunch or just by noise in the hallways or hearing people say certain phrases that catch your attention over the cube wall. That causes a question or a conversation and then an unknown dangerous dependency becomes public and can be addressed. We don’t have that on my team.
I want to start using Twitter for this purpose. I have been using twitter for a few months now after being an absolute skeptic. I have found a great way to connect with people that I otherwise wouldn’t have met, to get information that I wouldn’t have seen and to stay in touch with what is going on in people’s days. This is what I want to unlock at work. The biggest question I have around this is, should I have separate work and personal Twitter accounts?
I’d love to get feedback on experiences you have had with using Twitter in the workplace.
