It’s no surprise that Twitter, the current darling of social media and one of the fastest growing web sites, is now becoming the subject matter of entire conferences. There is a tremendous opportunity for businesses and brands to use Twitter to their advantage, including through customer support, brand management, advertising, job search and much more. But everybody is still trying to figure it out. Let’s have a conference!
Twitter has yet to settle on a monetization strategy but is exploring different business models. Here are several conferences that are taking place in the near future (or have taken place recently) devoted to learning about all things Twitter. Do we really need so many Twitter conferences?
140/The Twitter Conference: Taking place in Mountain View, CA on May 26-27, this Twitter conference is bringing together developers, journalists, business executives, and others to discuss the business value of Twitter. Here’s a sampling of panel topics: Possible web services with the Twitter APIs, how organizations should be using Twitter, the branding opportunities of Twitter and more. Speakers include: Alex Payne, API Lead for Twitter; Anamitra Banerji, Product Manager for Twitter; and Loren Brichter, developer for Tweetie.
Twitter Boot Camp: Tim O’Reilly is sponsoring a boot camp in mid-June in New York to teach businesses best practices on how to use Twitter to their advantage. Notable speakers include O’Reilly, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and Steve Rubel, senior vice president at Edelman Digital.
TWTRCON SF 09: Taking place in San Francisco on May 31, TWTRCON focuses on discussing how to use Twitter as a business platform to reach and engage customers, influence opinions and activate markets. Speakers include Guy Kawasaki, Founders Fund’s Dave McClure and Twitter’s Anamitra Banerji.
140 Characters Conference: This conference organized by Jeff Pulver takes place in New York City from June 16 to 17. Participants will discuss Twitter’s disruption of social media and look at microblogging’s effect on celebrities, brands and advertising. John Borthwick, Fred Wilson, Tim O’Reilly (again), Tony Hsieh (again), Robert Scoble, Howard Lindzon, Steve Rubel (again) will all be on hand. (TechCrunch’s co-editor Erick Schoenfeld also will be speaking on a panel).
Perkins Madrona Twitter Conference ‘09: Law firm Perkins Coie and VC firm Madrona Venture Group joined forces to sponsor a Twitter conference on May 15 in Seattle, WA. The conference was targeted, like the ones above, towards discussing how businesses can leverage the power of Twitter.
Media140 Twitter Conference UK: This Twitter conference hails from our friends across the pond. Held on May 20, this conference brought together journalists, developers, and publishers to talk about how Twitter is effecting news. Topics included how Twitter will influence traditional local news sourcing and distribution and best practices of how to use Twitter in the news world.
I’m sure there are other Twitter conferences out there, so be sure to note the gatherings you know about in comments.
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