Why is everyone going cuckoo for Twitter?

If you’ve got time for Twitter, you’re just not working hard enough. I’d rather concentrate on opening my US office, thank you.What’s with Twitter? Everyone seems to be ‘tweeting’ these days and I just don’t see why. I’ve spoken with some of my friends and business acquaintances to try and get to the bottom of this apparently pointless fad and as yet no explanation has made me think it’s anything other than a waste of time.

Does anyone really care that someone they’ve never met has a big pitch tomorrow or that Jonathan Ross has just offended more overly sensitive people? The next time I hear someone complain about how busy they are I’m going to ask if they use Twitter – if it’s yes then I’ll point out they’re not as busy as they think!

Seeing as I’m ranting, it would be remiss not to mention the VAT cut. It was clearly a total waste of time: most businesses say the cut had “no impact” on trade.

I’ve never understood the thinking behind it – was 2.5 per cent ever going to make a difference to people’s buying decisions and boost consumer spending? I’m no economist but surely all we have now is a further hole in the country’s finances and even less faith in the government. Smart move.

In other news, I was pleased to get a call from Oli Barrett asking me to visit one of the schools participating in his excellent Make Your Mark with a Tenner scheme recently. Seeing so many kids engaged in dreaming up money-making schemes is fantastic and it was great to have the opportunity to give them a few pointers on making money in a tough market.

It’s good to find so many entrepreneurs still making the effort even though times are tough. If you’ve not managed to engage in some sort of social enterprise in the last few months let this be your nudge to get out there and give a couple of hours to something worthy.

My time is severely short at the moment. Our US office opens this month so my business partner, Kelly Robinson, and I are flying to Miami in the morning for a week of networking with the top brass of America’s biggest staffing companies before Kel heads over to his new home in LA. It’s a big challenge for us but we’ve been well received so far and made a point of securing revenue there before we arrived.

I find Americans easy to do business with as they love to put deals together. The English accent goes a long way there too!

Plus, knowing some busy times were coming up I did manage to get away to Switzerland earlier this year at the hospitality of Tom Allason, the founder of eCourier. Tom’s got a great business mind and it’s amazing how a conversation over a beer in the mountains can get the creative juices flowing. I highly recommend it. (Just don’t let your host take you on a red run if you’ve never been snowboarding before. Cheers Tom!)  

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