Companies of all sizes monitor their customers to see what they like and dislike. This is how Twitter has come up with most of their features. Although there is a lot of people who aren't on Twitter, many would know that they call their posts "tweets". This is the consumers idea, not the company's. Many times when users get together, you never know what they are going to come up with. These ideas usually generate from users while the companies wait on the sidelines to see if the ideas have any mass appeal. Twitter maybe one of the biggest companies to rely on consumer generated features.
Many times a company is started for one thing but leads into another. Flickr was started as a feature on an online game site, before long the game site was shut down and Flickr became the new site. Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive stated “You get a bunch of users interacting and it’s hard to predict what they’re going to do,” he said. “We say, ‘Why are people using this and how could we make that better?’ ”
I thought this article was really interesting. I had always thought that companies came up with all these different kind of features and ideas. I was really surprised to find out that the consumers were the ones usually coming up with them. It makes sense though. Wouldn't the consumers who use the product almost every day know the product best. Also, they would know what would be popular and what other users like too. It's smart on the company's part.
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I am a Twitter user, and I never knew that "tweet" was user generated! That is funny. I use a few social networking sites and when I read this article I realized that we do come up with a lot of saying and slogans ourselves. Interesting!
ReplyDeleteVery good points. I am glad companies admit to watching things like this to help their businesses. Sounds like a plan to boost a business to me...
ReplyDeleteI don't use twitter. But it's very interesting to know that users are coming up with sayings like "tweets." It kinda makes sense though, the users are the ones using the site the most so why not come up with own words.
ReplyDeleteI am not currently a twitter user, but it seems like it might have more substance to it than facebook. This article demonstrates perfectly how a companies ideas are only as good as the users response. The best way to figure out what consumers want is to watch there behavior.
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