Twitter
Twitter's revenue has been a concern, they keep posting loses each quarter.  Yet VC's are still plowing money into the company.  They obviously believe Twitter is on the right track.  How they plan to monetize their business model is not apparent to anyone outside the company.  They examples of marketing campaign successes, such as the Paramount summer blockbuster movie, Virgin mobile, and Audi, are very exciting.  It shows the potential to reach the right buying audience in a short "act now" campaign.  I love it.

In the meantime as they work out creating more marketing campaigns and building up their base of advertisers, they continue to build their subscriber base.  True.  If their subscriber base wasn't so large and rich in diversity, the campaigns wouldn't have worked.  The campaigns wouldn't have worked if there wasn't a joint effort to advertise them in different medias.  But what a success.

Lesson Learned:   I may not be crazy about Twitter, but as someone who knows the value of marketing, I will stay involved and keep an eye on how this develops as a marketing tool.

Blogging
Blogging, both internal and external is another social media tool used by large corporations, as in our business case study of DRK.  I loved the progressive and open attitude of Rangaswami.  I also loved how he allowed employees of various work groups to choose their OS system, PC or Mac, and to choose their own programs.  He called it a natural selection process.  I call that listening to your employees so they can effectively get their job done.  Love it.

Internal blogging is something I wish other companies utilized.  I'm always coming up with efficient work arounds, new uses for programs to make the job easier, and work processes to make the job easier.  I would gladly share this with others, and I have.  My processes have become part of company policies, used to customize programs, and helped others streamline  and organize their work.  Some of those folks have worked in their position 17 years and started adopting my methods. I bet there are others out there with great ideas that could make everyone's job better.

External blogging would be nice to see as well.  When blogging first became more popular among companies, they would hire someone else to write the blog for the president, VP of X"YZ or some other executive.  You could always tell.  That's not really the intent of blogging, but if it makes them feel like their doing something edgy, I guess it works.  When Warren Buffet writes his annual letter to stockholders, everybody is holding their breath waiting for the letter.  It is so meaningful for stockholders and non-stockholders to hear what the financial genius of the 20th and 21st century has to say.  If he had a blog, imagine the traffic and visits to that blog!  It could be another source of revenue for Berkshire Hathaway.  Hey, maybe I can propose this to Warren and get a job managing it.  I better study hard in this course then.

Lesson Learned:  Blogs are effective collaboration tools and motivate employees. I also learned that a leader can be bold and trust his employees to do the right thing.  I liked Rangaswami.