Using Twitter to Learn About Trending Cruise Topics

Cruise Buzz Riding the Social Media Wave

Opinion: It seems that I am not the only one interested in”tweet curation.” Two posts today caused me to take notice: one making waves on Mashable and the other via a post on The New York Times website.

The use of Twitter to report on major news events, like the Costa Concordia incident is obvious. But what if you wanted to go back today and review the stream, would it be possible? The answer is maybe.

Twitter allows users to access of up to 3,200 tweets of a person’s timeline, unless you know the permalink. In addition, Twitter restricts users to an archive of 1,500 tweets for a specific hashtag or keyword. In the case of Costa Concordia, it would be difficult for someone to recreate the stream. It can be done, but it is not an easy task. (read more about how long tweets last here).

New Twitter Feature Coming Soon

The ability for users on Twitter to download their tweets will be added to Twitter, according to CEO Dick Costolo who discussed “tweet curation” at the Online News Association Conference. What that means to avid cruisers is that we will now have an easier way to keep track of relevant links, posts, and tweets from the cruise lines and individuals interested in cruise travel, news, and reviews.

Entertainment Industry paves the way

Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Tanzina Vega wrote about Using Twitter to Promote The Fall TV Season. This article described “the second screen experience,” which describes how (some) people can watch tv and tweet and/or update their Facebook status.

While watching tv has little to do with cruising, I do foresee that we will start seeing more integration of social feeds at out cruise ship inaugurals, red carpet events, and shoreside experiences.

Getting the execs and pr entities onboard with new marketing and digital projects will benefit cruisers in many ways.

The biggest advantage of using social media in the cruise industry at events is that more consumers can participate in the action allowing more brand interaction and dialog with the community.

Rick Haskins, CW network executive vice president for marketing and digital projects (@CW_Network) is quoted in the New York Times article as saying that “the consumer owns the brand and the more people that embrace that and entertain it, the stronger the brand is going to be with their audience.”

If you have not had a chance yet to see how we are using social media to help report about trends in the cruise industry, you can check out some of our reports:

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