Fred StutzmanThoughts about information, social networks, and privacy

When describing Twitter, I use a number of analogies. Most commonly, I think of Twitter as something like a slow-motion chatroom, or even a collection of away messages. I’ve got another one to add to this list: subject-only email.

This new analogy actually comes from my use of the iPhone, where the Twitter interface isn’t all that different from the mail interface. Twitter displays a sender and a brief message, which mirrors the sender and subject elements that you’d see in an email inbox. The main conceptual leap is that with email, there’s often a payload of information, tasks or spam waiting for you. With Twitter, you’ve only got the message (an an occasional URL as payload). This very fact is why I enjoy checking Twitter, and detest my inbox.

Thinking about Twitter this way helped me imagine enterprise integration of a Twitter-like service. I envisioned adding a “Twitter pane” to email clients – a pane for Twitter-like communication aside the inbox. This Twitter pane would act as an ongoing message thread away from the inbox, and its uses would be more conversational, informal and informative.

Imagine the scenario of a guest lecture. Let’s say you’re bringing in a friend to give a talk at your company. You send out the detailed email notice, and maybe a few follow ups. To attend this talk, your coworker must process the email, calendar it, and remember. If the talk is fairly last-minute, that coworker needs to be attentive to email information coming in just-in-time. In these models there’s no space for casual prompting – replying-all to mailing list to say you’re “going to hear Sally’s talk” is generally outside of norms. However, the enterprise Twitter affords a communicative third space – a place for coworkers to discuss, remember and remind one another of the lecture, by virtue of their discussion (and perhaps live-Twittering) of the event.  In this sense, the enterprise Twitter surfaces the collective, prompting observers to action.

The enterprise Twitter gives rise to a new channel of communication that offloads from the inbox, and introduces new forms of communication.  In offloading the inbox, one can imagine common/frequent para-social tasks like casual lunch invites moving to the Twitter channel. In fact, the public nature of Twitter might provide unique opportunities to meet others – it might be a little strange to invite a stranger lunch, but a “who is hungry?” message to the public might allow an ad hoc group to form. In new forms of communication, one can imagine messages that might not pass the listserv test (“Can someone help me with this Perl?”) getting passed to the semi-public of the enterprise Twitter. This presents the opportunity for new connections, more efficient work, etc.

The enterprise Twitter is most interesting for its potential vibrancy. Corporations have adopted internal social networks, and while these networks represent a more robust directory, I doubt many would qualify as particularly vibrant. This may be because corporate social networks don’t really address employee needs,  rather addressing the needs of management in analyzing and diagnosing the “structural holes” of the organizations. An enterprise Twitter does address a very real problem – our ever-overstuffed, mismanaged inboxes – and it introduces a vibrant and relevant communication channel to the enterprise.  The enterprise Twitter might just be the electronic, distributed water cooler of lore.

In implementing an enterprise Twitter, I’d argue that one would certainly want to follow the 140-character limit, allow private, public, and semi-public (conversant) threads. The enterprise Twitter would be inside-the-firewall, and would also follow the limited profiling pattern of Twitter (Name, Bio, Link). Political considerations should be addressed. Perhaps an arbitrary follow limit of 100 would be useful – this would prevent everyone from simply following upper management out of “respect.” Other potential benefits would include the enterprise Twitter as a news or safety channel (posts could go out regarding severe weather and so forth).

Although I’ve used the brand name Twitter thoughout this post, there’s nothing Twitter-specific about the practices I’m discussing. The enterprise Twitter is just a directory, sets of permissions, a messaging protocol and integration into the messaging client. If it sounds like a replication of email, the key differences are only the social affordances and the mental model.

This scheme is not without drawbacks. Primarily, the cost of designing and integrating messaging system is not trivial. I would respond that Twitter has introduced a new type of message, one that our systems and devices should support – therefore this integration is inevitable. Another drawback is distraction. Twitter is a notorious time waster, it is addictive, and it is always on. To this I would drawn an analogy of the modern inbox – it is never off, more corporations expect you to carry mobile devices – so a Twitter management strategy should fit into larger communications-management strategies.

Inside the enterprise, individuals rely on a variety of tools and strategies to stay in communication. None have the unique affordances of the enterprise Twitter, and few offer the common social bridging role of an enterprise Twitter. My thoughts are obviously preliminary, but if anyone is working on such a project or thinking of beginning one, I’d be very interested in your thoughts/feedback.