Not having a LinkedIn profile nor a Twitter account already means to them not being tech savvy…

Marketing is discovering microblogs as well…

Even the British Prime Minister is represented officially on Twitter at this moment.

Pieter Jansegers

Many years ago I was responsible for the introduction of email into the investment bank at CIBC – yes I am that old. Launch day was about 10 days away and I was in Paul Cantor’s office with the briefing. All the technical issues had been nailed. What worried Paul and I was adoption.

This was the time when “Real Men” did not type and what few senior women there were did not type either as they feared being seen as secretaries. All managers had secretaries who looked after all correspondence. So there was a huge technical and cultural barrier to email.

Then Paul had an inspired idea. He called in his secretary and dictated a memo that went some thing like this:

“Next Monday our new email system will go live. So this is the last memo that you will receive from me like this. After Monday I will communicate exclusively using email

Of course it is entirely up to you if you wish to choose to still be in contact with me”

Oh it was so funny seeing the old guys pecking away at their key boards in the weeks that followed.

So if the big guy and a few colleagues in an enterprise were to make the commitment to Twitter it would get adopted very quickly I think

BTW, brilliant pun there, with “Obvious.”

To answer briefly, I think it will be a disaster AND a hit.

The possibilities for leveling hierarchies, personal branding, career advancement, accelerating professional development and mentoring, opening communications and opportunities, teambuilding, knowledge sharing, managing events and remote teams, collaboration, etc. are wondrous to me.

That office politics, slacking, awkwardness and the potential for abuse will come with it is unsurprising. Then again, can anyone argue that the adoption of email wasn’t rife with the same concerns?

It’s a great question and I’ve been pretty preoccupied by it.

Twitter-as-it-is will not be a hit!

But a twitter-like (easy to use) system or WordPress+PrologueTheme-like system that supports Andrew McAfee’s imagination in How to Hit the Enterprise Bullseye will be a BIG hit

“I imagine that successful enterprise Facebook equivalents will have much more advanced tools to allow members to actively exploit their networks by asking them for assistance, pumping them for information, etc. I also imagine that they’ll let users post answers to their most frequently-asked questions, then simply point seekers to this resource.”

Am working on such a eFe (enterprise Facebook equivalent) – Please use NextBestAction.com.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

I also posted about one of the potential use cases a while back (http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/niallcook/archive/2007/06/26/internal-twittering.aspx). Be interested to see if people think it’s still valid.

Niall