I don’t claim to be a social networking expert, but as someone who has spent quite a bit of time thinking about end-to-end user experience and how companies can best use social services like Twitter to their best advantage, I decided to see how two of the biggest names in blogging use Twitter to support their brand identity.

WordPress/Automattic

I’ve been a WordPress user ever since Six Apart (who I’ll talk about a bit later) introduced paid licensing plans for Movable Type a few years ago. Since then I’ve gone back and forth between the systems usually at a rate of about once per year just to compare the feature sets, ease of use, and overall reliability of the two services. I suppose you could say I prefer WordPress for blogging because I keep coming back to it; however, there have been some very real improvements with Movable Type 4.2, so much so that I’m seriously considering either switching this blog to MT 4.2, or using MovableType exclusively for any new blogs that I start from here on out.
I like WordPress because their documentation runs rings around Six Apart’s, and because the community of folks who use WordPress are very committed, very helpful, and willing to lend a hand whenever you find yourself in a jam. When I published a post detailing my unfavorable experience moving this blog from the self-hosted WordPress product, to WordPress.com (and back again), Lloyd Budd sent me a public reply on Twitter offering help if I ever ran into any problems again. I was impressed at that kind of service, and it’s the little over-and-above customer service interactions that breed customer loyalty. 

Movable Type/Six Apart

When it comes to brand recognition and visibility, I don’t think any other blogging system comes close to touching Six Apart and Movable Type (in my completely unfounded, unresearched, and inexpert opinion). Bolstered by having prolific and high-profile bloggers on their management team, Six Apart’s greatest success is the potential audience they can attract by virtue of the popularity of these bloggers.
When it comes to ease of use, however, Movable Type has a long way to go toward renewing any feelings of ill will I harbored toward them because of the licensing program and because of some well-documented problems I had when moving from WordPress to the open beta of Movable Type 4. They weren’t terribly responsive at the time I had the problem (although a close friend and MT evangelist I know was), but since then, SixApart popped up in my Twitter response list more than a few times in the last two weeks whenever I had questions about MovableType 4.

The Battle of the Twits

I’ve been following SixApart for about a month or so now, and since then I’ve been really impressed with how they use Twitter to talk about Movable Type. They pack much more in 140 characters than many other companies can pack into a one-page press release. Taking a look at some of their recent tweets, you can see that they run the gamut from talking about newly introduced features, to offering links to longer pieces that detail how bloggers big and small use Movable Type to publish their content. Here’s an example of the most recent tweets Six Apart published:

When I look at these tweets I see a company that is committed to engaging with users (or prospective users) in a personal and approachable fashion, and a company that is passionate not just about their platform, but about blogging in general. It’s very attractive, and it speaks very well of the amount of thought Six Apart put into using Twitter to their best advantage.
So how is WordPress doing in comparison? I admit that it might not be the most fair comparison since I only just started following them today, but I took the opportunity to page back through some fo their tweets to see if those on the front page were a representative sample of how they used the service overall. Let’s have a look at some of their most recent posts:

 

From what you see here, it’s easy to see that WordPress has a thing or two to learn about marketing. While announcements of product updates might be useful to those in the developer community (and to some degree, for more advanced users), there’s nothing in these tweets that tell me why I should use WordPress, or that directs me to press releases or case studies about bloggers and organizations that use WordPress for publishing. They’re champs when it comes to brevity, but brevity isn’t always best when you’re using a resource like Twitter to support your company’s business goals.

Conclusions

In this age of whuffie and building social capital, no organization can overlook the importance of presenting a friendly and approachable face to it’s installed and potential customer base. While I prefer WordPress as a blogging platform, Six Apart is the champion when it comes to making the most out of its Twitter stream. WordPress and Automattic could learn a thing or two about crafting a unified face across all their online identities, and could stand to spend a little more time on that message instead of on creating joke videos that poke fun at the competition (and even in this instance, Six Apart comes out on top because they come across as having a sense of humor about the ribbing they took from Automattic!).

Ever since I left UX behind, I’ve been wondering how I could take my UX knowledge, pair it with my love for/experience with Web 2.0 concepts and technologies, and create a position that doesn’t yet exist within many library organizations. There are librarians who have made this leap already, and it seems that the profession is becoming conscious of of the advantages to having a dedicated, experienced UX person on staff, so there is precedent for this kind of position. My challenge is to sell my skills, to campaign for this position so that library hiring committees will wonder how they ever did without someone like me in their organization.
The job responsibilities/description(s) might look like the following:

User Experience Librarian:

• Charged with creating positive user experiences across the library’s virtual and physical properties and services;
• Take leadership for understanding library users, their tasks, and their information needs;
• Conduct remote and contextual observations of library customers as a foundation for enhancing/improving existing library services;
• Work with library management to develop library policies that adhere to customer-centered philosophy and practices;
• Experienced at gaining customer insights and translating them into recommendations;

Community Librarian/Community Manager

• Chief evangelist for the library in online social networks;
• Engage library patrons by responding to requests through blogging, instant messaging, social networking/social media, and mobile technologies;
• Promote library events and services through non-traditional media channels;
• Monitors community input for future ideas for library services;
• Trains librarians and library staff on integrating Web 2.0 and social media technologies across the library’s diverse properties

It is clear to me that these positions are ancillary; rather than converging, they seem to complement each other and may best be served by two (or more) people working together in a virtual services department, or as a division of a library’s marketing and communications department.