I’ve been impressed how several companies have pulled me in after I started “Following” them or after mentioning them on Twitter. For instance, I mentioned a feature of Smartsheets on Twitter, one of their marketing people found that (saved search), and a day later their CEO ended up setting me up a smartsourced task request to help me get over the starters’ fear/hurdle of engaging the MTurk community through their smartsourcing service. Beyond that being really nice, that’s really good bonding with a lead. I’ve had a similar experience with ki work.
These Twitter experiences feel like 1997 when there was community around people trying to build up the web. Back then, I was working for a for-profit incubator vetting business plans, doing due diligence, and working for companies we funded. One day this guy called a couple minutes after I was surfing on his web site. I hadn’t signed up or anything so I have no idea how he figured out who I was (pre-google) and how he found out which phone line extension mapped to which IP address. He really wanted to know what I thought of his service (and why I left the site without signing up).
Twitter may get ruined but, for now, it’s working.