The Silverlight Team are twittering now..

I’ve just spent the past couple of days enticing my fellow Silverlight Team members to embrace twitter more (@teamsilverlight). It’s been a bit of an uphill battle to be honest as whilst some pro Social Media folks will cast a glazed confused look, one must also remember that not everyone enjoys the splendor of social networking online. (Each to their own, just like I'm not a massive WoW fan these days)

To some twitter was a case of “I’m picking my nose” and suddenly 500 people are following you. Ok, it’s obviously more powerful than that as it’s about opening up your brand to having a more intimate conversation with potential customers and existing consumers.

For example, one company that I think is nailing corporate twittering is @comcastcares. As Frank (the man behind the twitter handle) whilst a one man band, seems to be deflecting a lot more negativity away than before and for me as a comcast customer it’s been rewarding to know i can turn to @comcastcares to get a straight answer. That in turn builds a more intimate friendship with what i would typically associated as a faceless brand.

Having the ability for you all to send messages to the Silverlight Team while we sleep and also having multiple people access the account whenever they have down time to respond, is going to be beneficial for us all.

If you can’t find the right person to talk to, @teamsilverlight will direct you. If you want something to be in the next release of Silverlight, than @teamsilverlight will listen (best part is it’s 140chrs so you have to think hard about what’s important now!). If you feel the need to yell at Silverlight for whatever reason, @teamsilverlight will be there to listen and absorb your pain – may even engage and ask questions why! :)

If all it is you want to do is send a big thank you to Silverlight Team, then @teamsilverlight will be ready and willing to accept them.

If you want to see what’s hot and get short bursts of news from the Silverlight Team, @teamsilverlight is your friend!

At the end of each month, I’ll be aggregating the important tweets that the team should know about and ensure they get sent around to everyone from marketing through to the engineering to even Scott Guthrie himself.

It’s your chance to interact.

Twitter is just an experiment right?

Today Biz Stone (Founder of Twitter) announced an upcoming business model for Twitter and I'm glad they’ve finally executed the next phase of their plan(s).

Next phase is the keyword there as my theory is that you give it away for free for a year or two, seed the market and entice the folks by their hordes. At this stage you accumulate a wealth of data and traction with end users as this in turn provides value  as opposed to just charging up front straight out of the gate (requires a lot of patience as well).

As Product Manager i think we may be one of many to buy the professional accounts as this could be an acceptable approach to understanding what we are doing right or wrong in tweetland whilst at the same time ensuring we keep both lines of communication open with folks whom are fans of Silverlight.

I constantly am monitoring online traffic in as many pockets of the web as possible for early signs of weakness or strength when it comes to Silverlight or WPF.

Twitter is simply one of many channels that we monitor to ensure we’re not becoming ignorant to our consumer needs.