Up to now, Twitter has consistently been used as a conversational tool by people who logged onto Twitter with their real names and identities. Only media outlets like @BBC and enterprises like @ComcastCares would “broadcast” professional-grade tweets and refrain from idle chat and the type of Twitter conversations that would be incomprehensible to its users.
The new movement to aggregate Twitter feeds into portal web properties – Tweetmeme, Muckrack, Venture Maven and BreakingSFNews are four examples – places greater demand for professional-grade Twitter content that stays on topic. Who wants to hear the meandering tweets of an incomprehensible conversation?
There will be a move by Twitterers to launch a “commercial” Twitter feed that parallels their personal brand feed. This begins to change Twitter’s role from that of a chat box to a more focused broadcast media in which readers / followers rely on the Twitter feed for data value, not irrelevant “What I am doing?” conversations.
UPDATE 5/13/09 12:45pm PDT: WSJ management sets personal vs. business policy on Twitter. (hint: it’s all about business)
