By Beth J. Bates, New Media Special Correspondent
BusinessWeek.com has published a wonderfully eye-opening slide show entitled “CEOs Who Use Twitter“. While I wasn’t surprised that CEOs are using Twitter (I follow several myself), I discovered that this was a follow-up article to another published back in August 2008. The original 2008 article reported that only 18 prominent CEOs were using Twitter (while I’m sure there were more, BusinessWeek.com profiled 18).
Now, just nine months later, the website is featuring 50 CEO profiles including Jay Adelson, Digg CEO, Richard Branson, Virgin Group Chairman and George Colony, Forrester Research CEO. What I find interesting about these profiles is that they not only provide Twitter statistics for each executive, but also reveal how Twitter helps them improve their business. While many CEOs use Twitter to communicate with their customers and keep up on industry news, Guy Kawasaki, CEO of Alltop.com uses Twitter strictly for broadcasting (and has been criticized for this on many occasions.) “Twitter for me is a broadcasting tool. It’s not a “social medium” at all.”
BusinessWeek.com also included a great article, “Social Media Beachcombing: Survival of the Twittest?“, which analyzes creative ways in which social media is being used by companies and suggests which technologies may stand the test of time.
It will be interesting to see whether BusinessWeek.com chooses to run a follow-up article in a year or two to analyze Twitter’s true impact on CEOs and business. For now, I’m glad to see that executives are tweeting with the rest of us.
Beth J. Bates consults with Hinge on social media tool selection and strategy and helps its clients find effective ways to leverage these new mediums to meet business goals.
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