Did you know that Comcast, the largest cable television company and second largest Internet service provider in the U.S., uses Twitter to figure out, if something is wrong with its network?

According to Sarah Milstein, a Web 2.0 strategist and Co-Founder of 20slides.com, more and more companies start using Twitter. They use the micro-blogging service to listen to and resolve complaints. Not only that Twitter delivers them free research data, some of them use Twitter as „Canary in the Cole Mine“ – as Sarah puts it. Especially smaller companies promote their products via Twitter in a smarter way.

When starting a Twitter account, a business needs to determine who within the company will run it, says Milstein. Businesses should not always twitter about themselves, but also share information that is related to their expertise: “The biggest mistake a company can make is thinking this is a great place to push out information about itself”.

Currently, Sarah is writing a book – together with Tim O’Reilly – about Twitter. The “The Twitter Book” will be available in June. Before joining O’Reilly in 2003, Sarah was a freelance writer and editor, and a regular contributor to The New York Times. Sarah can be reached via Twitter @SarahM .

The interview was recorded during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco at the beginning of April for German Public Radio “Deutschlandfunk” and “Bayerischer Rundfunk“. The video version is published here on my private blog.