I’m still not sure about Twitter. OK, so it’s great for following Lance Armstrong, but is it really a going to be a good business tool? SupplyFrame is definitely innovating, by providing a twitter interface to allow engineers to request data via twitter (@datasheeter). The service cleverly returns a TinyURL of the search results to whatever you send as a direct message.
Although a neat idea, I’m not certain of the benefits of twittering a search term and then clicking through to the results page, when the same objective would have been achieved by simply using the search box on the site. So far a number of people seem to have experimented with the service, but it will be interesting to see if SupplyFrame can enhance the service to make it really useful in the long term. Despite my reservations, I’m really impressed to see a publisher in our industry find a way to use Twitter creatively.
