A recent poll on LinkedIn asked users a simple question: “What is the most important new platform for brands to master? Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone, Digg, or LinkedIn?”
The results may not be what you’d expect. Even though the poll was performed on LinkedIn, with more than 3,600 respondents so far, Twitter was deemed the most important new platform for brands to master.
Specifically, the results of this poll revealed that LinkedIn users view Twitter as of primary importance (30%), followed closely by Facebook (26%). LinkedIn came in third (22%), followed closely by the iPhone (18%). Digg was far behind the pack: it garnered a paltry 1% of the votes.
Twitter’s popularity make sense given the rapid growth it has been experiencing. The National Business Review reports that Twitter is currently gaining 10 million users per month. However, ReadWriteWeb breaks down the results further to show that:
Most appreciative of Twitter: Business owners, C-Level or VPs. People at large- or medium-sized companies. People doing business development, marketing or creative work.
Least appreciative of Twitter: Non-managers. People at very large or small businesses. Consultants, Salespeople and Engineers.
Most appreciative of LinkedIn: C-level and non-managers. At small- or medium-sized businesses. Doing consulting or sales.
Least appreciative of LinkedIn: Owners and managers. At large or enterprise companies. In creative or marketing departments.
This poll has clear implications For HR/Learning professionals. Ask yourself three questions:
- Are you experimenting how to use Twitter as a personal learning tool–to enhance your creativity and keep up with current happenings/thoughts in your industry?
- Are you exploring how to create a “Twitter-Like” application behind your firewall? If Twitter has become so addictive, why not leverage this “inside your company?” One to consider is Yammer
- Are you sharing the power of suing social media for learning with your teams?
Share how using social media can improve your personal learning and your HR/learning department.
To continue the dialog, come follow me on Twitter!
[tags]Social Media, Social Networking, Media Shift, Web 2.0[/tags]
Twitter’s more important than LinkedIn? Certainly not according to Workforce.com and this article’s author. Neither of which model that which they profess by listing their Twitter links (mine is http://twitter.com/LLAmos). In fact, I don’t think either have a presence on that microblogging service (if they do, they are not clearly-visible on Workforce’s site).
More’s the pity.
Best,
Lalita (@LLAmos)
I have to say again that I don’t think Twitter has legs!
But, that doesn’t mean it’s not important to have a corporate presence there.
Twitter seems to be designed for entrepreneurs and small biz owners who want to eventually drive traffic to their websites. Twitter is fabulous for people who want to join a community of other like minded people who are all working to help promote and market each other as well as themselves. People login to Twitter every day, and in some cases, all day long.
LinkedIn seems to be ideal for the person who is just looking to reconnect with people they used to work with. They want to track them down for job leads, to ask for a reference, to catch up, etc. With LinkedIn, no one seems to login every day – only when they need something.
Facebook seems to be the perfect blend between those two worlds. You can easily reconnect with old classmates, colleagues, friends – and it seems that most people on Facebook login pretty frequently.
These communities are only good if people are active on them. That’s the problem with LinkedIn – I find that most people don’t play an active role in the LinkedIn community.
This may be a recent poll, but I’d be curious to know who was doing the asking and who was asked. First, this is like comparing apples and oranges. They are completely different tools, serve entirely different purposes, and are not mutually exclusive. Second, there are about five times as many people using LinkedIn as use Twitter. Just the numbers alone should tell us something. The poll itself is very strange. It’s like asking the question, “What is more useful, a hammer or a screw driver.” The task and the purpose determines the usefulness.