Dave Donohue: nerd-in-residence

I have been struggling with the Twitter phenomenon. It is the darling of the blogosphere at the moment. Steve Rubel, the first blogger I read every morning, is a huge fan. I couldn’t figure it out - at first (and still now, to an extent), it seemed like a glorified update of an IM status window that bothers people. Kevin Dugan’s take is a lot like mine - but he’s got a hilarious cartoon as well as some very revealing Blogpulse trends.

This week, I read Rafe Needleman’s Newbie’s Guide to Twitter, and it started to make some sense. I still don’t think it’s going to become the Next Big Thing (for me), but I can see why it’s on the rise. Even the New York Times is distributing news via its Twitter feed (edit: I just saw that Dave Winer also has used the Twitter API to create something similar from the NYT’s RSS feeds).

Since I can’t help but read about Twitter every six minutes due to its ubiquity, I started thinking of how it might be useful for PR people.

I have an idea. PR is built on relationships. All other things being equal, a journalist or blogger will answer a call/email/IM from someone they know and trust before an unknown quantity, especially when they’re on deadline. Now, it’d be suicide for them to let their Twitter network know that they’ve got a free second - they’d be inundated with pitches.

But what of the reverse? If I were to post to twitter that “I’ve got some hot news” or “Let me know who’s got a second for a good pitch”, and those people that I have a relationship were to respond (e.g. “hit me” or “not now, dealing with earnings”, etc.), could a new pitch medium develop? Or at least a better way to avoid those “Hey XXX, got a minute?” calls?

I’d be curious to hear what people think of this idea. If there’s anyone who’d prefer not to comment publicly for fear that their twitter name will be abused, feel free to IM me or please use the contact link above.