Twitter for Research?

We just finished our P&G research project and presentation yesterday, and wouldn't you know it, today I came across an excellent source that I hadn't previously found - a video interview with P&G's current CEO, Bob McDonald.  And you know how I found it?  By searching the phrase "P&G CEO" on Twitter.  A Yale student/grad had tweeted a link to it (it's on a Yale Blog).  None of my other research (or the rest of my team's) had uncovered this.  I found it in a twitter mention.  It hadn't occurred to me to use Twitter for my research for the project - I was just trying to see whether Bob McDonald tweets, since I was very impressed by his thinking and management style, after having done our project.

I've also been discovering that seeing who a person/entity is following can give you a lot of insight into that individual or company.  And that can be its own source of valuable research.  I followed @RossDawson because a lot of KM people I follow are following him (e.g., Thomas Stewart, Kate Pugh, David Griffiths, KM World Magazine, David Gurteen, Andrew McAfee, ARMA, AIIM and more).  I didn't know anything about him but what was on his twitter profile.  

Then the other day I somehow came across Ross Dawson's name outside of Twitter (I think I followed some series of links from an Andrew McAfee blog that's assigned reading this week).  And from there I got to Amazon and their Ross Dawson author page, and learned more about him.  Now he's less a random name to me, and more a recognized quantity.  And a good resource to be following.

I'm trying to formulate my thinking on Twitter follows and mentions.  In the current digital landscape, it seems that a follow on Twitter can be somewhat analogous to a citation in an article or book, and the perceived quality of the follower (as would be the case with a publication), reflects directly on the person/entity being "cited" to in this way.  A follow isn't a citation (as opposed to an @ mention or a RT or link to a blog post), but it's sort of a "potential" citation, in that the follower values the follow-ee's knowledge and insights enough to want them in their feed, and/or expects the content thereof to be useful and/or entertaining.

I'm finding that I very much use Twitter as my source for news and articles relevant to my current interests.  I'm following people involved in the field(s) I'm interested in, and when they link to blogs and/or articles, I often try to read those myself (I really need to learn to speed read, though!).  

The twitter-verse is sort of like word of mouth at warp speed.  I think many companies and individuals have already seen its potential as a resource, but I suspect there's even more gold to be mined, both content-wise, and from studying the sociological phenomenon of it...