Twitter’s marketing message

While the argument about the effectiveness of Twitter as a marketing tool is still raging, it’s clear that plenty of companies are having a go at building sales using the social media site.

Researchers at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) scanned through over 500,000 tweets for a study and found that 20% of tweets were either requests (to friends, followers or the companies directly) for product info, or responses to these requests.

Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology at Penn State, says Twitter could become as important a form as customer communication as email.

“People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services,” Jansen said in a statement. “Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.”

The research is yet more proof that companies simply cannot afford to ignore Twitter – your customers are already on there, and there’s a good chance that they could be talking about you (negatively or positively) or wanting to talk to you.

But the research also raises some interesting questions for Twitter chief Biz Stone and his team about the future of the service.

Twitter is fiercely proud of its reputation as being first and foremost a social network, and attempts to use the services for blatant marketing have often been heavily criticised by users.

But it’s clear that the barbarians are well and truly inside the gates – that is, the marketing communications is now a huge part of the Twitter world.

But Stone and small team are probably wondering whether this may eventually hurt this site. Can Twitter hold onto its funky, cutting-edge image? And if it can’t, will the loss of the community vibe drive users away?

The other question for Stone is around generating revenue. He’s built a great new tool for companies to talk to their customers, but there is only one problem – they are not paying him a cent for the privilege.

Twitter is currently in the process of considering revenue-generating options – including display advertising and charging companies to run corporate accounts – but this process seems to be taking a very long time.

The Penn research indicates Stone could make a fortune is he moves faster.