How to Use Twitter to Share Software Release Notes

© 2009 Ugur Akinci
Here is a rather cutting-edge use of Twitter, posted by fellow tech writer Sarah Maddox.
It remains to be seen whether this method will be adopted as yet another channel of release note distribution but it definitely deserves some consideration (confidentiality considerations aside).
Excerpt:

What we did
Here’s the plan of action:

• Use Atlassian’s corporate Twitter account, rather than a personal account. Release notes are in a weird place, partly technical documentation and partly marketing information. People follow Atlassian’s Twitter ID and know what to expect from it i.e. company news. So they’re not dismayed to receive marketing-type information.
• Use a #-tag to tie the tweets together. This is the most exciting bit. It provides a way for tweet consumers at any time to see a collection of such related tweets. A collection of release highlights is… the release notes. Ta da ♪ ♫
• Use a shortened URL (e.g. TinyURL.com, bit.ly or tr.im) to link to the release notes themselves, so that people can read the full details if they want to.
• Don’t send out all the tweets at once. This would spam people, and a number of other people would miss out on your news because they’re not reading their tweets at the time. Instead, send out two tweets a day, the second about four hours after the first, for two or three days.
• Try it out for three or four product releases, then assess feedback and decide whether to continue.

Click here to read the rest of this fascinating post by Sarah Maddox (NOTE: The top part is a general intro to Twitter. Scroll down to get to the Release Notes section…)