Everyone seems to be talking about Twitter, the latest social networking site which now has more than 10 million users.
Twitter is rapidly emerging as a major source of financial innovation. A short message service for mobile and internet users, limiting a posting to 140 characters maximum, it also allows users to share web addresses of useful information. As a result, it is a fantastic knowledge-sharing resource, with the majority of users over the age of 35.
In my case, I didn't get Twitter until I found a range of internet-based tools, such as TweetDeck, which let me easily meld it into my work. Now it has become my essential text message service for the internet.
I would recommend bankers to take note of the service. After all, we all ignored PayPal and yet it now has more than 70 million active users.
Twitter can be terrific for catching customer dialogue and responding, as Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) found when a customer posted an angry Twitter.
The client was going through a lengthy mortgage process with CBA and was fed up with the wait for final approval, which might mean they would lose their house purchase. So they twittered their frustrations and, within an hour, had a CBA customer service rep twitter back and sort out the problem.
But while talking with customers through social media makes sense, where is the PayPal for Twitter?
There are already financial sites that are growing around it, such as TwitPay, Twollars, Xpenser, Tweetwhatyouspend, StockTwits and FXTwits. These all offer some form of payment or finance service through Twitter. Meanwhile, Wesabe and other social finance websites are also integrating with Twitter, so they think it is important, as do some innovative banks, such as Wachovia, Wells Fargo, ING Direct and ANZ.
Bottom-line: to ignore Twitter and other social network tools puts you in the category of the folks who used to think television would wipe out cinema or that the internet was just for pornography and gambling.
Chris Skinner is an independent financial commentator and chairman at The Financial Services Club (www.thefinanser.com)
