Can Twitter be a Practical tool for Apartment Communities?
September 13, 2008 – 3:00 pmTwitter as it exists today is not a very practical application for apartment communities. It needs to allow users to communicate with a “family” of users. For example, everyone within the apt. community that has opted in.
Yammer, a twitter like application for businesses is trying to solve a similar problem by providing everyone within an organization a tool to communicate with each other in real time. An instant message of sorts with the ability to follow, track and search messages.
If I were a new resident of an apartment community, I would like to have an efficient way to communicate to management, have management communicate to me, and have the ability to communicate with other residents within the community. I would call it Cwitter. (Community + Twitter) :)
How could this work for apartment communities?
- Resident signs lease with community
- Resident has option of signing up with Cwitter.
- Resident can view everyone within the Community and follow those they are interested in
- Residents could Cweet to each other things like social events, dating, local activities, buying and selling, etc.
- Management can communicate with residents and vice versa
- The larger the community the larger the ecosystem.
- Eventually, other communities within a 2-5 mile radius could be added into this ecosystem as well.
What are your thoughts?
2 Responses to “Can Twitter be a Practical tool for Apartment Communities?”
While I love your idea for an expansion on twitter (Twitter 6.0) and I think it would make it an even better tool, I disagree with you that it is not yet useful. I think that twitter as it currently exsists is a GREAT tool and can\\\’t believe that more communities aren\\\’t using it. People have been looking into using twitter feeds as communicational tools with their residents and been met with great success. A chief example of this being Urbane Apartments\\\’ portfolio in the midwest. What Eric and his team have done is pretty dang brilliant.
If you want to know more about why I think twitter is a great tool, check out my twitter post on: http://behindtheleasingdesk.com/2008/08/12/what-could-the-microblog-do-for-you.aspx
By Heather on Sep 13, 2008
Brent, if you’re reading, this idea needs to be an option in your platform…
I think it would work well as long as it was based on Twitter itself, rather than some new, unfamiliar tool that requires a separate account and password. Yammer has potential because it will be rolled out in controlled enterprise environments, whereas I think Cwitter — as a stand-alone app — would struggle to gain traction in all but the most “wired” communities. (How about CommuniTweets?)
Certainly, everyone’s favorite Comcast employee, Frank (@comcastcares), has proven that Twitter can be used effectively as a listening and customer support tool — his response times often are much faster than those of their call centers.
Love where you’re going with the idea, Dan!
By Mike Whaling on Sep 15, 2008