The Business Of Social Directory Assistance

This is one of my favorite aspects of Twitter that I’ve come to use a lot. I can’t think of a better place to get real opinions/recommendations/answers from real people almost instantly.

I definitely think this aspect of Twitter will be a large part of its future. People want recommendations from people like them and/or people they have a relationship with.

How cool would it be if tourism bureaus had a representative on Twitter monitoring when people landed in town? When you came to Chicago, a Chicago tourism rep would hear ya on Twitter and ask if there’s anything they can help with, recommend restaurants near the airport, great shows, etc.

Great question Chris, and an important one indeed!

Yup. We work with a lot of CVBs, and this is exactly the strategy that we’re just starting to lay out for clients.

By paying in to twitter with loads of helpful comments (and not the typical travel/tourism stock card rack copy), those orgs can slowly, deliberately position themselves as the local info authority, easily accessed by anyone with a question.

Social directory assistance is a perfect name for it.

They [Twitter] would be best off letting the indy developers do their thing and snatch them up, assuming they have the capital. Looking to the crowd to point them to a solution would be a good angle as it’s in the nature of their service to begin with.

Twitter is a powerful tool!

Recently it has definitely become a “social directory assistance” in my life. It is my main source of suggestions, answers, and sometimes news. When I need to know something on the spot, I tweet it and get a response almost immediately from a real person. Depending on the situation and question, sometimes I prefer tweeting for an answer rather than google-ing .

Greg Sterling says that he would rather prefer answers from a known source rather than an anonymous-human. What he fails to see that your twitter network sees and knows your daily routines, know your interests and preferences because they read your tweets everyday. If I ask on twitter “What is the best Chinese Restaurant in the Los Angeles area?” my twitter network will respond according to what they know about me- google or even yelp cannot do that!

Thanks for sharing this! I am a college student and aspiring marketer/ entrepreneur- it definitely made me think about the great business opportunities that are developing!!

It already does it if your following has the answer. If you’re followed by 20,000 people and you want a restaurant in New York, London or Paris chances are you’ll get loads of replies to your tweet.

Not so good if you have 5 people following you and you want a restaurant in Bookham, Surrey.

I think the opportunity is in gathering expertise groups that you can tweet. If I could go to twitter and ask for people local to Bookham, Surrey then send a tweet to all the people in this group asking for a restaurant recommendation I might have more luck. Expertise groups could be set up for any topic or location, experts could be invited to subscribe to them and users could twitter them with queries. Presumably this could be monetized with sponsored tweets.

I suppose this would become more like a real time or live version of wikipedia than a threat to google search.

I agree that there is an opportunity here.
Have you visited kgb.com yet? This Knowledge Generation Bureau is trying to take the idea of a social directory assistance and put it into action by having people pay for the feedback they receive – online or via text message.
Just like I’m not sure how Twitter can possibly make money, I’m not sure if the kgb model is going to work, but it’s something to keep your eye on.

Interesting idea!
Techcrunch had an good article a few weeks back about Google being a search engine of intent while Twitter search being a real-time sentiments whats-happening-right-now search. It can be found here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/15/mining-the-thought-stream/

As mentioned in the other comments, this is definitely an interesting topic, and might provide some interesting business models for companies using Twitter as a platform.

Of course all this will depend on Twitter becoming even more mainstream than it is at the moment.

Twitter can be instantaneous, which is great! It also creates searchable history based on subject matter.

Your post got me thinking about a cool idea I plan on implementing for one of my sites. The idea is to ask people on my Twitter list to “tweet” their pick for comic or graphic novel of the week along with a URL where people can possibly buy the comic or graphic novel. These tweets would then be collected and posted on my Indy Comic News site the following week.

I think this will be a great way to expose people to some comics and graphic novels they may have missed or not even heard about. This idea could be used for a multitude of things. One example would be for an independent movie where the producer or person behind the movie could ask people to Twitter their thoughts on the movie. These could then be collected and posted somewhere to help market the movie.

Now I just need to figure out how to implement my idea…

Wesley
The Geek Entrepreneur

There are a number of Convention & Visitors Bureaus on twitter. @VisitChicago, @TravelPortland and @BaltimoreMD are three of the most-followed bureaus on twitter.

@TravelPortland has a Twisitor Center. They encourage people to use #inpdx for Portland questions and have a team of experts that respond.

And http://www.twisitorcenter.com is an awesome site that lists of all twittering tourism bureaus, domestic and international.

Definitely a thought provoking post and follow up commentary. Social directory assistance – great term for socnet 411 or in some instances socnet 911.

Twitter truly is instantaneous community sourcing as well as are other socmed tools: FriendFeed, Brightkite, etc. My social online community is my default first source for information, recommendations, research, suggestions, advice – and of course, online conversation.

I think there’s a huge opportunity for twitter search and quick advise / interaction in location based services. As in, have a volunteer force, or a Twitter ‘Directory Assistance’ account that you can hit that detects your location and can route you to the proper ‘operator’ who can help you with your inquiry…..

Or a Twitpoll that can compare what people in the network think the answer to your question is – side by side with the google results. It may make your searches better, and if / when Google integrates this data, it could really be the next step in getting you to where you need to go the quickest.

@ryancmiller

Great opportunity on crowdsourcing. I think we will see more co-op type of businesses. You become a member (paid or free) and you get the benefits of collaboration and connecting with others around a similar goal/product/service.
Great applications for: recruiting, travel, problem solving, freelancing, non-profits finding volunteers, much more! So fun to be part of an open-source generation of business.

My company, Praized Media, has built exactly that, a Local Answers service platform that can be embedded within any WordPress blog (or in any website using our API) and serves as a social directory assistance tool. Users can ask their social network friends (including their Twitter and Facebook friends) a local question (what’s the best kid-friendly restaurant in San Francisco?, etc.). The question is then broadcasted on Twitter using a przd.com short form URL and all answers are collected in one unique Web page on your site. You can see an example at answers.praized.com. This free platform can be downloaded on WordPress.org