Jim did a great job presenting about Twitter at the DC Social Media Club meeting last night (hosted at Viget.)  He told some engaging stories about his Twitter habit, and how he’s used the service during everything from the Virginia Tech tragedy to his travels to Iraq with President Bush. 

The discussion got me thinking more about how Twitter is being used practically, right now, to address real business issues.  I experienced an example this week.

I’m a fan of Mixx, in part because I love to see local start-ups do well.  They’ve been getting Crunched lately, which is cool.  I signed up a while ago, but I’m not very active yet.  I do have the “Allow other users to share Mixx items with me” option checked, which I believe is the default.  I’d never received an item from other users, though, until this week when I pulled up my email to see about a half-dozen emails from Mixx, all saying “Someone has shared a link with you from mixx.com.”  I was surprised, and happened to tweet:

“wondering why i have so much email from mixx this morning”

1 minute later I got this reply from Justin, so I figured something was up system-wide:

“@barn: i have a lot of mixx e-mail this morning too”

3 minutes later I got a direct message from Will, who works at Mixx:

“we are fixing the issue as we speak. Someone did a little spamming last night.”

Had I been concerned (which I wasn’t) my concerns would have been allayed.  Communication problem solved. 

Now, I know Will — we follow each other — so that was easy for him.  Following all of your users might be difficult (but why not try?).  He could also track the keyword “mixx” and contact complete strangers the same way, when needed.

Is this a good way to use Twitter?  Is this an efficient way to communicate with your users?  Regardless, it’s effective and it’s working right now, so why not use it?