Twitter making Dell money?

Big-box desktop maker Dell is telling us it has made $6.5m in revenue directly through Twitter since it's first tweet in 2007. That's amazing news don't you think?

$6.5m is a big number - that's the sort of number that gets the attention of the New York Times. However for a business that rakes in $61bn a year in revenue it represents 0.01% of its annual revenue. Basically, analysts like me would be hard pushed to pick that effect out of the revenue data over and above the noise - but that's the beauty of the internet...trackability!

It makes you think if those Twitter sales are truly incremental? Everyone buys a Dell online so would those customers have bought elsewhere? Had any of Dell’s other sites had seen a similar decrease in sales?

Either way, it has to be commended. Dell has embraced social and ultimately the ongoing relationships they are developing with their customers will prove more valuable than these sales, and ultimately result in even more incremental sales and less sales lost in the long run