Sometimes answers just fall into your lap unexpectedly. That happened to me today about Twitter.  

I attended a lunch today of local legal knowledge management professionals. We meet monthly and at our last meeting, Twitter came up. One thing led to another I agreed I would demo Twitter today. After a quick orientation to Twitter, I said “Let’s see if we can find the answer to a key question about Twitter using Twitter” so I Tweeted:

  • I am at DC Legal KM lunch demo’ing Twitter. Any comments on the single best reason to use Twitter?

Within the space of about five minutes, I received the following replies on Twitter. Both the substance of the answers and the fact that I got so many answers so quickly was quite a good demo of the potential value of Twitter:

  • CarlJacobsen Best thing about twitter is the unexpected. I love the serindipity nature of it — finding things I never knew I didn’t know
  • jeffrey_brandt Its a great resource for whats happening, stimulating questions and links to more indepth information
  • IntegreonEDD Twitter is a great medium for building relationships with other people and organizations that share like interests
  • stevematthews Best twitter use is asking questions & getting answers from those you choose to follow. A personal advisory board.
  • KMHobbie 1 Replace Google Reader as the best way to find the good articles on #km in law and business. 2 Make nice with @VMaryAbraham.
  • bobambrogi Single best reason is to monitor the buzz, see what colleagues are talking about.
  • bschorr Colleagues I respect often Tweet articles or ideas that I might otherwise have missed.

In fairness, I explained that not every question I asked on Twitter elicited so many answers so quickly (I think my ‘followers’ understood the demo circumstances). But I’ll let the self-referential nature of this post speak for itself. And also for how one can integrate blogging and Tweeting.