Let’s look at it from a marketing perspective–this is powerful! If we incorporate the idea of ‘First, Ten‘ by Seth Godin, we have now have a powerful tool that allows us to find and market towards people based on keywords. The beauty is that the people have done the work for you by listing you and by connecting you with what they are interested in. All you have to do is group your lists and pitch accordingly.

1. Immediacy of information
Twitter is a great place to learn about breaking news. Many times regular people will actually expose the story quicker than organized media.

2. Pertinence of information
Twitter is a great place to find information pertinent to what one wants to know about. Asking questions is always a good way to get feedback about products, businesses, etc. People will respond.

3. Twitter can provide a nonintrusive connection/communication with child
Whether a parent wants to know how their child’s day is going or want to drop a quick piece of information, it is a great way to interact with kids with out smothering them. Plus a child’s tweets can be sent to any device receiving SMS’s or RSS feeds.

4. Interaction with people in similar line of business
Twitter is a great place to meet people in the same line of work. It is teeming with business professionals and companies that want to get their message out. This is a great place for one to see the competition and interact/adapt to and with it.

5. Get satisfaction
Twitter is a great way to voice opinions. Companies are listening and many will respond to what is said about them–good or bad. It may also be used to guilt children into doing something with a well placed @ reply.

6. Exposure to culture
Twitter will expose the ‘secrets’ of modern culture and provide many learning experiences that add value to everyday life.

Then I think of the power of Twitter.  Maybe my church should get a Twitter account and put TweetDeck showing Replies on a projector.  That way when the minister is talking someone could tweet in a follow up point.  Like @examplechurch John 3:16 really hit home for me. or @examplechurch Your slide show is showing Genesis instead of Exodus! or @examplechurch I am a bit confused about how you explained why Jesus died for us. Could you offer a few more words on it?

Yes, some from the older generations would find this a bit disruptive.  But others maybe glad for the opportunity to be able to ask questions semi-anonymously.  Plus it tells you where peoples questions lie, points the minister needs improving upon, it offersadditional thoughts on the subject at hand or provides good segways, and not to mention, it keeps people paying attention and builds relationships.

To those who say it would be abused, someone could filter it in real time–the guy running the slideshow.  It would only take a few adaptations to TweetDeck or I am sure a similiar more focused/caitored program could be written to do the same thing.

But why stop at church?  Surely big businesses could be running the same thing in their offices and stores.  They could get instant feedback while customers shopped.  People could agree with each other @jcpenneys The new fall wardrobe looks really good. or @jcpenneys Everyone stay away from X brand towels in here.  They fall apart! Not only would stores get great information about what customers are thinking, they can also market themselves as customer conscious and in return would get marketing feed back.

Restaurants could use it too.  @pizzaplace Ugh, I am at table 6 in PizzaPlace and my food just came to me cold. That could warrent an immediate response by the waitor to resubmit an order or go and attend to the person at table six.

In today’s world, being interactive with your customer is necessary.  Be it church, a department store, or a restaurant, promoting interaction is all good.  I just think it would be cool to sit in church and tweet @examplechurch Yeah, Jesus Rocks! and have it pop up on screen for the entire church body to see.  And with the size of my church 800 – 1000 people per service a lot of perspective could be gained.