The Airport Waiting Area Syndrome Goes Global with Twitter
by Bill Ives
There was a lot of discussion of twitter at the FastForward 09 conference. Sitting in several airport waiting rooms on my return to Boston, I was reminded of when I worked for a large consulting firm and I would go to work on airplanes. On a number of assignments I would go to a large firm located in small places. This meant that many of the people in the airport waiting area were consultants from a variety of firms. I was always amazed that many of our competitors would openly discuss their client experiences and their sales approach to the client in the airport waiting area in a loud or, at least normal voice. Without trying, we could hear what they were doing. Now they could have been supplying misinformation but I doubt this was the case.
This also happens on occasion on cell phones in the airport and even on the plane itself. Now Twitter opens up a whole new way to give away your company secrets to anyone anywhere who wants to listen. I was talking with a marketing person who subscribes to his competitors Twitter feeds. He finds that they often discuss recent sales calls on Twitter. He can then forward the competitive intelligence on to the appropriate people in his sales force. Again, misinformation could be supplied but I think this would be counterproductive for a number of obvious reasons. This is the same type of blindness that the Ketchum PR guy demonstrated. However, it is magnified as there are even more audiences that you do not want with this type of information.
Now I am not against Twitter. I am starting to use it more and now use TweetDeck. I am just amazed how some people do not understand its power but then I guess it should not surprise me based on my airport waiting area experience.
Post script – The Economist recently wrote on How Twitter stopped a coup. One of the losing side said, “Be authentic on Twitter…But still keep a frickin’ secret when you need to.”
