A few ideas for language-targeted Tweets
I about 80 % of the time, I tweet, blog and communicate online in English. Though most people know English is not my mother tongue nor do I live in a country where English is the official language. Still I choose to communicate in English, simply because more people can understand what I am saying.
Even when it comes to sharing information it is usually easier to just communicate in English because if I refer to others work or writing, people do not have to be confused when it is in English. Many might disagree and just share in what every language the information is available, and that’s fine for them.
Either way, Chris Brogan’s post today about Geo-targeting on Twitter really made me see the possible solutions for sharing in multiple languages from the same profiles, without confusing people.
Basically all opportunities for targeted tweets would be useful for various reasons, especially when you have got a couple of hundred followers. But let’s take a closer look on what we could to if Twitter allowed language-targeted tweets.
How language targeted tweets could be set up:
There are a few different ways to set this up.
One idea is to choice the spoken and understood language in the settings. Then the receivers will get all the tweets that the people they follow send out on those languages. To manage the individual tweets there could be a box where you choice language that you tweet in. Preferably with a default language, as there will most likely be a preferred language. This way the set up would be easy, and after the set-up it would only “bother” the people who actually want to have this opportunity.
Another way takes a bit more setting up, but works the same way with the tweeting. But basically you choice what languages you want to follow a person in, when you begin following that person. This mean that you do not have to follow all people in all languages, only the one’s that you are particularly interested in.
Possible ways to use language-targeted tweets:
The more obvious benefits are that you will be able to answer @replies in multiple languages; still only send them out to the people who understand that language. You can also share links and other information which is written in another language than your default, and be sure that people do not end up on pages they do not understand.
For companies with offices in different countries this might also be a good solution to handle customer service instead of having many twitter accounts which could confuse the clients.
But I’m sure that the uses of language-targeted tweets would create many more possible functions than the ones that I just mentioned.
What could you use it to? To you see any advantages or disadvantages of this? Or perhaps you have a better idea on how to set it up?
