Twitter is getting uncontrollably big and viral, and having a twitter profile is becoming a must for bands who want to increase their online exposure. This one band from Silicon Valley called Moonalice (whose lead guitarist is an investor for a venture firm) has experimented on different accounts using Twitter to promote their gigs, and on April 3rd they tried something pretty cool that paid off: their sound guy captured, exported in mp3, uploaded and tweeted their songs… all of this during the gig one song after another. The tunes went viral in their twittersphere amounting to more than 3000 downloads in the last week. What I find a little compelling is that Moonalice’s Twitter account only has a little under 400 followers, but downloads are more important than followers (or are they?).
Twitter is indeed opening many doors for the creative bands, but it’s not as intuitive or as easy to exploit as many people tend to say it is. It takes times to create a following, and Twitter ain’t big everywhere. Oh, and it also garners a rather active community of geeks, and not everyone (and especially not all fans) are “social media friendly” (or whatever geeky expressions used to defined those who love to spend their time connecting with others behind a screen).
For now it seems that using Twitter effectively is a question of knowing if your fan-niche is web-savvy. If it is, then you are encouraged to create an account and tweet away. If it’s not, it will be in a not so distant future :)
