In “Marketing Small Businesses with Twitter” [NYT, 7/23/09], Claire Cain Miller profiles some small businesses that are using Twitter’s free platform to communicate with customers and peers. See the New York Times site: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/business/smallbusiness/23twitter.html.

When we strip away the hype around Twitter (hype that is already normalizing a bit), we can see Twitter as a platform that is

1. simple: Twitter is constrained in a good way. The focus is on message, not format—the character limit brings focus.
2. open: Through search, hashtags, @ replies, and visible follow lists, Twitter is built for discovery. The network effects are almost strong enough to let you sit back and succeed.

Twitter deserves a place in most companies’ communication portfolio. It’s a limited user set, and there are dangers in diluting a brand’s voice, but the benefits are strong.

Are you using Twitter for business? Have customers found you through Twitter?

On Friday, May 8, Chris Hughes spoke at NYU Stern. Hughes, 25, is a cofounder of Facebook and was a driving force behind Obama’s online campaign juggernaut My.BarackObama.com.

He sat on a dais for one and amiably answered questions from Stern professor Jeffrey Carr and the audience. The luncheon was hosted by the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and sponsored by Stern alum Norman Himelberg, of Himcor Group and Reisel Management LLC.

My chief takeaways:

• Michelle and Barack Obama are just as friendly and smart as they seem on TV.
• On election night, Chris knew Barack had won when Fox called Ohio for Obama.
• He does not foresee going into politics himself, but admires people with those skills. He noted how different political campaigns are from businesses – teams form for several months to compete for an absolute win or lose on a single day, so efforts on process improvement have a much shorter, terminal scope.
• For entrepreneurs, a focus on product is even more important than a plan’s emphasis on market size or team make-up.
• He reminded the entrepreneurs in the audience that choosing an accountant or lawyer isn’t for life - what’s important is to make that first choice.
• He sees good opportunities in location-based mobile applications; separately, he sees a need for an open source platform of social media applications that most or all social entrepreneurs would need. Imagine Obama’s site, my.barackobama.com, saved as a template or generic architecture for other social causes.
• As an Entrepreneur in Residence at General Catalyst Partners, Chris meets with entrepreneurs and other smart folks, reviewing plans and developing his own ideas. General Catalyst helped launch sites such as Kayak.com and Upromise.
• Noting what sociologists call “weak ties” (social connections that are valuable but less deep than those with one’s closest friends), Chris cited [sorry - missed the name :o) ] as a powerful app for enabling Facebook users to direct communications to the most appropriate “bucket” of friends (i.e., college chums vs. office mates).
• He also cited Facebook Connect as one of the most valuable parts of Facebook, since it saves people the trouble of filling out new profiles on other sites, makes it easier for sites to get people registered, and helps users promote the other sites as their activity is reported to their Facebook friends.
• An occasional Twitter user, he sees Twitter and other sites as part of a complementary ecosystem of sites with different audiences and uses. Going forward, these sites will evolve with more focus.
• The power of Facebook was reaffirmed to him recently. As he ended a tour of a remote village in Senegal, his guide asked if he and his friend were on Facebook. Besides making tangible the fact that Facebook has more than 200MM members worldwide, the friending made it easy for them both to get to know each other (the guide must have had a shock when he realized who Chris was :) but also extended Chris’s knowledge of and resources in Senegal. So “weak ties” can be rich and valuable.

Beyond all of this, Chris was approachable and downright friendly. He travels quite a bit, speaking with and coaching young entrepreneurs.

Cheers to Chris, the Berkley Center, and Mr. Himelberg!

I found myself wanting to share a video (below), but then realized that the pathway I took in discovering the video demonstrates the value of having a Twitter presence that’s coordinated with a Website presence.

In calling it a “relay,” I’m inspired by my daughter’s recent field day activities – slapping hands or handing off a baton as runners trade-off each leg of the race.

The first half of the Twitter-Site-Blog-Twitter Relay was run by the publisher; the latter half is in my court. Right now, I’m running the Blog leg.

Here’s the full case history …

I’m starting to Tweet on writing topics @Wordsupply, and @girlgetstrong4 followed me. So, I visited http://www.girlgetstrong.com.

Once there, I found this College Humor short showing an “unplugged” version of Twitter – walking around the city and shouting Tweets instead of texting:

So, I decided to return-follow @girlgetstrong4 and write this post. A Tweet will be the next leg of the relay …

And don’t forget the baton: Dan Gurewitch (@dangurewitch) and College Humor (@collegehumor). Dan has at least one new fan, and the relay race is free.

My goal with Wordsupply is to help folks move the baton. Let me know how you’re running.

Skittles.com splash/home page

Skittles stirred up quite a bit of chatter this week by outsourcing most of its Website to major social networking sites.

In a move that is presumably acceptable to Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, and Facebook (even though it reminds me of framing external sites within one’s own site, a technique long frowned upon since it traps visitors), Skittles sends visitors to its discussion pages on major sites. The “Chatter” link brings a Twitter search for all entries with “Skittles” mentioned in them; the “Friends” link brings Skittles’ fan page on Facebook.

A small red Skittles dashboard hovers over the external pages, unmovable in Firefox.

I’m impressed with this campaign because with the openness of its trademark rainbow (okay, maybe that’s too generous), Skittles is encompassing (okay, maybe coopting) communities where its consumers live – rather than trying to compete with them.

True, Skittles could build an island where people would discuss Skittles – but do you think people would go there? I assume that earlier versions of the site had some community experiments … assuming those grew slowly, if at all, can we blame Skittles for embracing communities where they’ve grown organically?

The same risk of heckling is there, but it’s housed within external sites. The challenge will be for Skittles to Tweet and engage within the communities it’s embracing. It may find that islands are easier to control, but in the long run, engaging with consumers where they live is bound to increase Skittles’ share of mind.

Whether your site links to an external social network or encompasses it within a Skittles-style dashboard, your firm has to engage these communities on their own turf.

P.S.: Note that Skittles asks for your age before giving access to its dashboard – and you must accept “terms and conditions” that aren’t disclosed through a link or pop-up – just outlined in the window’s text (see the orange box in the screenshot above). Perhaps one term is to allow tracking of one’s Tweets, Facebook activity, and YouTube commenting … only Skittles knows … UPDATE: Once signed in, there’s a link to a privacy policy.