By Matt Knuth

Let me confess from the beginning … I’m not a power Twitter user. So Biz Stone’s presentation at DMA 2011 was pretty interesting to me.

Here are a few ideas I got:

Twitter will become more prevalent for evaluating products and services. I never would have thought of it that way. I think of it as more of a broadcast medium. But it’s absolutely true that you can go on Twitter, search for a company and hear everything that people think about them — good and bad.

People are using Twitter to connect with companies. Again, I suppose I thought people follow companies kind of like they follow celebrities — just to see what’s up. But consumers actually expect (or at least hope) they’re making a connection. When they direct a Tweet to a company, the assumption is that they’ll get a real response.

Companies are becoming more adept at using Twitter to solicit information and respond to customers. This follows from the evaluation idea above. If people are talking about your products, you need to be there clearing up the misinformation or making amends or saying thank you. You can also research yourself and your competitors, just like consumers do.

People comment because they care. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t say anything. Don’t be discouraged by negative comments. It’s easier to spin negative into positive, because you have an engaged customer. It’s the customers who don’t tell you when they’re unhappy who are the problem.