Last year I discovered Twitter, inspired by video blogger and online infopreneur Raymond M. Kristiansen. Raymond worked very hard during the national election last year to introduce Video Blogging as a serious campaigning tool for the candidates of Radikale Venstre, the Danish Social-Liberal Party, of which both Raymond and I are members. I met him briefly then, and was tremendously inspired by his rigourous online activities.
Twitter allows you to post short (below 140 characters) messages about anything, and to follow others who do the same thing. One can send and receive messages via mobile phone as well as directly via the web. What is this useful for? Well, I’m still investigating. The constraint and mobility creates interesting results. Twitter can be anything from an individual’s stream of consciousness, two people exchanging mood swings or girl trouble or interesting links, or a group brainstorming ideas and theories. Twitter is a funny little thing. I haven’t quite figured out yet what to use it for, but today an occasion arose, which makes sense.
I’m participating in Oplevelsesiværksætter, a course in project leadership and investor relations for startups in the experience economy. The course runs for the next 4 months and focuses (unsurprisingly) on project leadership and investor relations. I decided today to use Twitter to share notes and thoughts about the course in relation to Kaplak. It fits perfectly with the way I write notes. I usually write things down to learn them better and reflect about what I’m doing. I don’t throw my notes away after such a course, but I very rarely read them again. I may as well share some of these thoughts and ideas online, while I’m at it. It tells a much less filtered story about Kaplak, as it unfolds from my perspective as leader of this project, which could be interesting for other entrepreneurs. All the time, everyone reading (other Twitter users) has the opportunity to comment and engage in the process as we go along.
Using Twitter for this kind of intimate log is also an interesting method of providing value to our company. Why can this be? Answer : it helps drive relevant traffic to our site. In this case, we want to attract potential “first” customers for Kaplak who are visionary and adventurous enough to seek out information on how to meet their online distribution challenges. Or simply feels the financial pain of imprecise distribution methods much harder than anyone else, because their market is too thinly spread for traditional retail systems.
On a related note, I’ve never experienced something as hard to explain to people than this, the intimate relation between hyperlinks and value. For most people it somehow seems utterly incomprehensible, that a hyperlink can be worth something. But in the end, this is what we at Kaplak is going to create our product around. Links matter, and it matters where you find them. The context the hyperlink appears in makes meaning. I’ll be very happy for any inputs on how to illustrate this connection between a “simple” reference and value.
I also want to say a big thank you to all of you, who have linked to Kaplak.com. It really is a great deal and means a lot to us, if you link to Kaplak.com from your website, blog, forum or email signature, or from your Facebook account.
Tags : attention, experience economy, hyperlinks as value, making meaning, Raymond Kristiansen, Twitter
Leave a Comment