“I work at Volvo IT and a part of my role is to be updated on new IT trends, which is the reason that I checked out the community Twitter. I soon realized that I could follow other members that wrote about IT trends, which actually made my work more effective”. One example is news on Cloud Computing which has been included in reports to the Volvo IT board.
But JP did not stop there. He decided to post his own messages under the user name “carokanns” to see how it worked. He started to publish tips on new IT technology with links to homepages. Soon he had a number of “followers” that subscribed to his postings. Quite early on, the White House became a subscriber under the username “barackobama”. “I was of course very surprised but also flattered. I guess it is a sort of proof that people find the information valuable”, says JP. In less than six months “carokanns” has attracted nearly 2.000 followers, but more important is the quality of those that sign-up as followers. Twitter includes a quality grading and recently JP became rated as number one on Twitter in the region of Western Sweden.
And the user-name “carokanns”? You may know that Caro-kann is a famous chess opening. I reached JP on the phone from Italy, where he spent his vacation. During the interview it turns out that JP has programmed four different chess games as a hobby. Last year the most recent one, “Alaric” became number four in the 2008 Second Annual ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships.
Facts:
Twitter is a free social networking service that enables its users to send and read messages known as "tweets". Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers.
For further information, please contact press officer Jan Strandhede, +46-31-3233715,
jan.strandhede@volvo.com
