A few days ago, I vented my frustration with some ... complex and unintuitive software behaviour by saying on twitter: "TFS, why do you fail to *undo* a checkout due to your bogus unspecified supposed locked files? I can has SVNburger?"
I did work around the problem within a few hours, but not before I got this unexpected reply:
JasonBarile said Can you send me more details on your TFS undo question? I guess that he found this is due to monitoring usage of the phrase "TFS" on twitter.
JasonBarile is, according to his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonba/ "a Principal Test Manager for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server at Microsoft"
So I did send him details, and a few tweets and emails later he had replicated the issue and was offering to send me a hotfix when it was available. (I don't think I need it, we've fixed the issue at hand.)
Now if, like many people, you've been wondering if twitter is more than just a fun toy, here is an answer. This is an example of using twitter well; how, by caring about the product that you're making and by keeping an eye on your users' chatter, you can produce an unexpectedly good user experience.
The other lesson is that you're not just talking to your subscribers. The latest generation of communications tools builds in searchability and watchability.