Twitterville (Book Review)

Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods

Twitter may be the most effective social media tool for promoting grassroots causes. Irrespective of whether one’s initiative qualifies as political, business, or artistic; this micro blogging platform integrates extremely well with blogging and other social media sites. In fact, Twitter continues to prove effective to the point where major corporations like Dell, Comcast, Jet Blue, Southwest Airlines, Proctor & Gamble, Virgin America, U-Haul, Geek Squad, Best Buy, Pepsi, Ford, Zappos, H&R Block, Rubbermaid, Molson, Tyson Foods, etc… all utilize Twitter in various ways. Shel Israel explains how these companies connect, promote, and run damage control in a 32 million member global community known as “Twitterville.”

To my surprise, after presenting the ways many businesses use Twitter to connect directly with customers (especially in handling customer service) Twitterville opened my eyes to “a large cult of generosity.” The book also considers our drastic societal change from the invention of the telephone to the phenomenon known as micro blogging.

I found reading Twitterville to be a refreshing experience because Shel Israel devotes the end of the book to how Twitter can be used to help people in need, as well as to promote world peace. The concluding messages in Twitterville place hope in an international community building ties through social media and technologically enhanced citizen communication.

Seldom do books inspire me to want to contribute to this world in whatever way I can. That being said, I never expected Shel Israel’s Twitterville to motivate me to search some of the sources he mentions. In particular, I was interested in blog widgets that allow bloggers to accept donations on behalf of a charity in a transparent manner. So if you’re a blogger and would like to collect for a worthy charity, check out the ChipIn site. You can customize blog widgets there (available for Facebook as well).

My recommendation = Twitterville is an insightful book—definitely worth reading
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Shel Israel is also the author of How Businesses can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods [Portfolio, Sept. 2009]; co-author, of Naked Conversations–how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers [Wiley, 2006], and The Conversational Corporation, a Dow Jones eBook [May 2009]. He’s contributed editorially to BusinessWeek and FastCompanyTV.