Here’s an interesting post about using social media as a tool in product development.
To many, the process of developing a successful product can be a mystery. Sometimes companies will spend months of development time to create a product that doesn’t reflect the needs or the scope of its intended market…
After we have used our monitoring tools to identify trends and audiences, we now begin to monitor scope and direction. Understanding how your target audience is using products is important in your planning process…
Although the example is a video software tool one could argue that the same techniques could be used for any product.
Although not explicitly mentioned in the post this got me thinking about a great hypoethical use. For example if you’re thinking about adding a new feature to an existing product you could see how many people are searching for that new product on Google via a Google Adwords tool.
And of course Google is a great tool to see what the competitve market place looks like. Although these techiques can never replace a large user survey they are much less expensive and could perhaps vet multiple options at an early stage.