There's no point in bellyaching over Twitter's model. The path to monetization may not be clear for the company itself right now, but it's clearly working for Twitter's corporate users.
In a press release issued this morning, Dell
Meanwhile, coaster fans were flocking to the Six Flags (OTC BB: SIXF.OB) Twitter account yesterday, as the regional amusement-park operator offered $10 admissions to its Twitter followers for a few hours. After the link was posted on enthusiast sites including CoasterBuzz.com, "server capacity issues" overheated the chain's online ordering page. The end result is that Six Flags gained thousands of new followers -- a brilliant move -- and is promising "another chance" at the marked-down turnstile clicks.
Think that sounds cool? Well, Six Flags is a relative slacker compared to Holiday World. The Indiana-based amusement-park operator is a Twitter-holic. All told, it has treated its followers to 2,150 updates through Twitter, offering everything from operating anecdotes to new attraction teases to heads-up alerts on ticket giveaways and promotions.
Maybe we're starting to see why Amazon.com
Twitter is also working on both a national and a local level. A USA Today article this week on the art of Twittering points out that a bakery cleverly promoted Cinco de Mayo by offering a free cupcake to the first person to say "Hola!" at its store. A Loic Le Meur blog entry earlier this month listed nearly a dozen San Francisco food-cart operators who are using Twitter to update hungry followers on their daily whereabouts.
Whether or not Google
Big things are happening with small sentences.
Some other cool tricks for tweets:
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