Twitter and a History of Technology and Communications

First, a bit of a prelude. Probably 15 years ago, I was talking to someone who did marketing for a high-end bike manufacturer. He was telling me about the amount of money the company was spending to really understand what their core customers (and their competitors’ core customers) were looking for in a bike…what did they really, really want? I pointed him to a USENET group formed and populated by people passionate about bikes. “They are doing your research for you,” I said. My point was that technology now allowed people who were passionate about a product or category to form communities to explore and communicate about that love–and that smart companies should be looking to technology to better understand that bleeding-edge customer.

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