Companies will soon be able to receive direct messages from customers on Twitter without having to follow the sender. In other words, anyone can send a message to anyone he or she follows, based on this change that Twitter is apparently making with its messaging policy. The policy change was first noticed by The Next Web and subsequently confirmed by other publications.
The focus has been on the impact for celebrities – they can expect to be bombarded by their millions of followers. Twitter, though, has a fail safe for these people: they can turn off the feature.
Companies interested in further engaging with customers, for their part, are hardly likely to do so. One such firm is Tata DOCOMO, which tweeted that it has tested the feature and it is working. “No need for us to follow you first,” it said.
Twitter has not announced the change formally or commented to media about it, making it unclear whether it will roll out to all users or just users with large follower counts that would find it clumsy to follow someone specifically to respond to a message, and then presumably, to unfollow them after the interaction was complete.
Business Center
The feature seems to be part of a service, Business Center, that Twitter said last Spring it would roll out last, All Twitter reports. In it, brands could receive direct messages from any follower. But Business Center never materialized, at least on a generally available scale.
Challenges
Until Twitter gives more details about the service – assuming it is in fact in the works – there is plenty to pick apart based on what it known about the service. For brands it could be incredibly useful – but only if that channel is well managed, which will require resources.
Also, blocking possibly abusive messaging would be difficult at least on a real time basis, All Twitter says. Indeed consumers show little compunction about criticizing a brand on social media, even one that tries hard to maintain a positive conversation. In a separate post, All Twitter notes that two Promoted Tweets purchased by McDonalds recently were essentially a waste of $800,000 as most Tweeters took the opportunity to criticize its offering.
The Promoted Trends, #ANewMcDFavorite and #LoveMcDsSmoothies, were promoting a new summer smoothie. People, though, were talking about how unhealthy the sugar-laden drinks are, or to denigrate McDonald’s more generally, All Twitter wrote.
Source: http://www.marketingvox.com/
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