How many of you out there have a Twitter account? Do you find it useful? Annoying? Trivial? Informative?
I've been on the fence, like many others. I've had a Twitter account for over a year. But as soon as I started following various users, I was appalled by the avalanche of blather that poured into my Twitter feed. I walked away from the whole phenomenon for a while, convinced that this much-ballyhooed new technology was just a collosal time waster, worse than FaceBook or MySpace, and totally useless to me in the business world.
But then I started to read more, and I looked again at Twitter, and how I was using it.
Like any form of social media, Twitter is only as useful as its users make it. A million people tweeting about their latest latte is useless. But Twitter can be more than that: swapping news about technologies and products can guide us toward discovering information that we care about. The key is being selective about who you follow. If an account you're following is spamming you with trivia, turn that account off, or assign it a list that you keep for entertainment only. You can start to weed out the noise this way, and begin to build a list of tweeters that feed you a higher quality stream of data.
So, we're going to tweet. We're already blogging, and we've found it to be an effective way to get the word out about new developments. Blogging allows us a chance to initiate guided discussions with the xTuple community, to present information, ask quesitons, and get people talking. We all have our own blogs here, with our photos attached, and we love the opportunity it gives us to interact directly with people outside the company.
We'll be using Twitter to help our "followers" (Twitter's term, not ours) to keep up with developments here at xTuple.org, which should amount to no more than a post or two a day. We hope you'll follow us. We'll try not to bore you with trivia, and maybe we'll even help you discover valuable information about xTuple products and the world of open source ERP software.
If you've already got a Twitter account, or if you're ready to give it a try, visit the xTuple twitter page and follow our feed. We promise to keep it useful. Thanks.
BC Wilson
With the explosive movement of cloud strategies, BC was promoted to director of cloud services in 2014. Previously, he oversaw operations and hiring of managers for critical lines of business for the Product Management Group, driving return on investment (ROI) for all xTuple products and managed ongoing engineering and development of the xTuple Classic GUI product, including all customer-sponsored enhancements, as well as the xTuple Web Portal product. Prior to xTuple, BC was a senior product manager for Trader Electronic Media, where he directed the development of websites for the classified advertising market. He has also worked as a partner in a web design agency, and a content producer for the Road Runner and Starband broadband service providers. BC began his career as a writer and editor for the Ziff Davis computer magazines.
He holds a B.A. in Theology from Georgetown University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University. In 2012, BC was appointed as a commissioner of Bicycle and Pedestrian Trails in Norfolk, Virginia.