Twitter: an interesting channel for WOM but far from a solution

Just how much is a word of mouth platform worth? According to Michael Arrington, $250-$500M. In today’s Tech Crunch, Arrington proffers that the value of Twitter exists in its capability as a search engine for companies seeking to understand what customers are truly saying about them. Google is in late-stage negotiations to purchase the firm. While I agree there is significant value in compiling the emotional, unedited reactions of customers while interacting with your brand, I disagree that Twitter is a perfect WOM solution.

Twitter collects in-the-moment responses to the question “what are you doing?” If I Tweet about difficulty in booking my airline tickets (valuable for the airline to know) I may not reliably follow up on the outcome of my Tweet. “Customer service was great!” The raw moment is revealing, but passive monitoring will not capture the outcome. I might then recommend the airline to a friend online or offline for reasons not captured in my Tweet. The anonymity of Twitter, occasionally likened to MySpace (gasp!), also compromises the value of this data. While a company could certainly collect a volume of comments, there may be limited insight into who is generating the feedback, making findings less actionable. Humorous examples proliferate about tweeting celebrities who aren’t the genuine article. Even an optimist can envision negative or positive WOM campaigns instigated by dishonest companies.

From an aggregation standpoint, many companies currently invest in services that aggregate buzz/feedback from across the web, including Twitter. Is Twitter large enough as a single channel big enough to warrant its own, paid reporting service? Maybe. Quantcast reports 6.1M visitors in March with an astronomical growth rate, yet the sources of traffic indicate a great deal of crawling and suspicious traffic-generating websites. 28% of users visit more than once a month, indicating for 72% of their base, Twitter is not yet a daily utility.

How should Twitter monetize? It shouldn’t discount the apparent business models that have emerged. Twitter has been a boon for companies like Jet Blue (@JetBlue) who have bravely stepped forward to interact with their customers directly. Jet Blue uses Twitter as a customer service and communication platform, interacting directly with over 282K followers and a dedicated team on staff to address questions in real-time. They have benefited from both the direct interaction with customers and the positive brand halo of press coverage as a cutting-edge customer champion. Now countless marketing conferences offer workshops on Twitter and the trade press is abuzz with new lingo to describe messaging in this channel. Why not capitalize on the buzz and charge Jet Blue and similar corporations for providing this significant customer service channel? Surely more bandwith is consumed by corporations and celebrities with hundreds of thousands of followers than the average user? So Twitter, what’s the wait?

Jet Blue uses Twitter for customer service and promotions- and wins.