Assume you want to go for lunch but not alone. You can check within your company who can join you. But how ? Exactly the similar situation faced by a Sr Executive in LG CNS Co, a Korean IT firm, when he wanted to have few partner for lunch. He just logged in to Twitter account and tweeted but only to employees within his technology-services firm. “Only within his firm ? “- Really Amazing !!!
LG CNS Co has been experimenting with a version of Twitter – A technology for sending short messages over computers and cellphones – which has been created for internal use for all 7,000 employees. Named as “BizTweet”, service is currently gaining momentum with many corporate houses and companies like LG CNS. BizTweet is getting used for internal communication and other purposes beyond the external marketing for which it has become well-known.
Twitter Inc, a short messaging social media networking website, is continuously experimenting with this short messaging service, initially designed for people to pass messages to their friends. To have more meaningful objectives from its services, company is analyzing various other options and tools which can be easily integrated with existing system. Companies like Starbucks Corp. and Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. have embraced it as a way to reach consumers. But now, just as they did with other Web technologies, people are finding new ways to make use of the Twitter concept.
A Twitter spokesman said BizTweet is “just another cool use” of Twitter’s technology and “showcases the power of open platforms and reinforces Twitter’s value for businesses.” He said more than 230,000 third-party applications have been built using Twitter’s technology.
Comparatively, Social Media trend has been adopted late by South Korean due to late arrival of Smartphones, which were kept out due to government policies untill last year. But wheel has been turned around now. With a wide estimates the current users falls somewhere between 400,000 to 1 million twitter users across the country. Several prominent executives, politicians and entertainers have built followings for their Twitter messages, or tweets.
At LG CNS, a group of developers who maintain company’s bulletin board, blogs felt to have something more than an uniform messaging email services across the employees which should be more impactful, instant and reachable. Passionate group of developers used this Twitter like service across the employees to diversified professional and personal messaging.
The group of employees took several of the key Twitter APIs and built BizTweet on LG CNS’s internal network. Last month, they invited 1,000 employees to test BizTweet. What has emerged, they say, is a real-time public conversation in the company. On Monday, the company made BizTweet available to all of its employees, and they posted more than 300 messages.
“This system doesn’t replace any of the other tools on the intranet,” says Lim You-kyoung, one of the developers. “It is more informal and creative.”
At the same time company was worried that after implementing this service, employees should not become more non-professional messages oriented which later proved wrong. After having deep analysis on all messages, companies realized that the major share of messages were about seminars, meetings, reminders and professional task which gave boost to the company to have such services as full fledged app to employees. “This is not a playground,” Ms. Choi says. But few rumors and time-wasting information emerged on the corporate system.
LG CNS is studying whether to provide the system as a product to its clients, which hire the company to design, build and sometimes run their data systems. The company is part of the LG business group that is best known for LG Electronics Inc., maker of televisions, cellphones and appliances, and LG Chem Ltd., the maker of batteries for hybrid and electric cars.
But the company’s marketers face a challenge because the corporate culture inside most South Korean companies is still rigidly hierarchical, with information chiefly flowing from the top down. Many firms may be reluctant to embrace a system like BizTweet that permits such an open flow of communication.
Sources : Reuters & WSJ
