There has been quite a bit of buzz lately about the micro-blogging service Twitter.  Naturally, the buzz has brought about conversations on how Twitter can be used for a variety of business applications, including qualitative market research.  I see opportunities for Twitter as a qualitative research method, but think there are a few key drawbacks as well.  Below are some of the potential benefits and drawbacks of using Twitter for qualitative research…

The benefits of using Twitter for qualitative research

• It’s free & easy – We’ll start with one obvious benefit – Twitter is free and fairly easy to mine for information.  All kinds of third-party services exist to help see the latest trends, hot topics, etc…
• It’s fast – If you have an active group of followers you can get answers to your questions quickly.
• It’s “natural” – We’ve written before about mining existing communities for qualitative research purposes.  Twitter is really no different – it’s an existing social network that can be mined for feedback in a “natural” setting.

The drawbacks of using Twitter for qualitative research

• 140 character limit – I don’t know about other qualitative researchers out there, but I’d be pretty disappointed if someone constantly responded with 140 character responses in an online focus group or research community.  Twitter’s limit of 140 characters per “tweet” doesn’t exactly lead to the most insightful and articulate responses from a group of research participants… Granted, you can just post a few tweets as a response, but that kind of defeats the purpose of micro-blogging.
• Who are you talking to? As with any research in existing communities, there is no established process for determining if the people you are talking to actually fit the profile of your target audience.  While you could actively recruit to find Twitter users who meet your criteria, it still would be tricky to ensure you’re talking to the right people…
• It’s “artificial” – While mining an existing community or social network (like Twitter) can be a “natural” and semi-ethnographic way to conduct research, it is still a bit contrived at the same time.  The Yellow Submarine blog has a good post about this…  Many people are tweeting with the goal of being perceived in a certain manner.  That kind of “posturing” doesn’t help qualitative researchers…

Ideas for how to use Twitter for qualitative research

I see less of an opportunity in using the actual Twitter service as a means of conducting research, and more of an opportunity to pull people’s Twitter feeds into existing online qualitative research platforms.  For example, a company could setup an online research community and ask members to share their Twitter feeds.  That information could be pulled into the community and associated with their profile to get a different viewpoint on the respondent and what they are like…

What do you think?

These are just our two cents on Twitter for qualitative research…  What do you think?  Have you used Twitter for market research?  Were you satisfied with the results?  Comments are welcome!