The quick and the read

Being online means being in business for fast moving generation Y entrepreneurs

On Wednesday afternoon, I was checking my personal Twitter account only to read the following tweet, just eight minutes old from social commentator Melissa Hoyer, “Can anyone recommend a Sydney based what-colour-suits-me-best expert? A ‘colour consultant’ I believe they are called.”

I responded “@melissahoyer @izzianaimage will help you for sure! They’ll give you a swatch of colours right for you!”

@izzianaimage is the Twitter name used by a friend of mine, Isobel who’s made a business out of making other people look good.

Sure enough, a few more recommendation tweets were sent, with Melissa graciously thanking each and every person who gave up two seconds to respond.

I emailed my friend to give her the heads up, but did not hear back for a good 30 minutes, which of course felt like an eternity because as a member of generation Y I have no concentration skills and even less patience.

Technology has made us expect instant replies; ease of communication spoils us.

From her business Twitter account, Isobel tweeted “Izzianaimage @melissahoyer - Colour Consultant, we would be happy to assist you with our Colour Analysis for Women. More info here: http://bit.ly/buJL3t”.

To some of our readers, the link looks like junk, however bit.ly and tinyurl are free services which shorten links, enabling companies to include links to websites, photos, videos and polls as well as a short caption, when faced with Twitter’s 140 character limit. I was one of many to respond to Melissa’s tweet three months ago as she asked the question, obviously having faced that dilemma.

Melissa tweeted that she had passed on Izzianaimage’s details (or “deets”), and on my way home, I received a call saying I had potentially secured Isobel and her Izzianaimage brand a segment on Mornings with Kerri-Anne. Also on my way home over Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge, I had a real-time email conversation with a friend in London, and chatted to another in Singapore using the web-based phone service Skype.

The world is tiny, really, really tiny.

By Thursday morning Izziana was in line to becoming a TV star, and again turned to Twitter and Facebook to source the models she needed for the segment. Within a matter of hours she had a possie of recruits.

The reason all this was so effortless is that all the participants use social networking as part of their daily lives, and are perfectly comfortable with the notion of switching between personal interaction and business dealings over the internet.

So as tempting as it is to ban Facebook or block Twitter during office hours, closing it down may well mean closing yourself out of interesting and lucrative opportunities, albeit disguised in tweets of 140 characters.

BRW

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