Today marks our first interview with an author who is focused on the ever changing world of social media. Shel Israel is the author of the new book, Twitterville, in which he describes personal accounts of successful Twitter use cases. To read more background on his book, please visit his blog.

According to his bio, Shel has been a “writer, consultant and video blogger for more than 30 years.” He co-authored a best-selling business book called Naked Conversations and has consulted for numerous tech startups. I approached Israel to ask him for his thoughts on the wonderful world of microblogging. The following are a series of questions that I was most curious about in regards to Twitter. Shel was kind enough to consider and respond.

MATAN HAR: Do you think every company, big or small, general or niche should have a Twitter account?

SHEL ISRAEL: No. I think Twitter is an extremely diverse and useful communications tool. Not every company would find it useful or productive. But I do think Twitter is a mainstream tool with as many uses as the telephone and as time goes by, more and more companies will find it a very effective and efficient way to communicate with customers and communities.

MH: What’s the next Twitter?

SI: I have no idea. That’s the fun part of the future. It always surprises you.

MH: What Fortune 500 company has the best Twitter presence in your opinion? Whose presence is lacking?

SI: I am not good at best/most/worst etc. lists. Companies need to do what is best for their businesses and what works with their respective cultures. I’ve written extensively about large companies that impress me in social media. These include Comcast, Dell, Microsoft, IBM and others. HP seems to be making great gains. SAP, Intuit and again Microsoft have achieved a great deal in community building. But I can no better tell you which company is the best at social media than I can tell you what company uses email or telephones best. To me it is the wrong focus.

MH: What would you say to someone who claims that social media, specifically Twitter, only captures the voice of younger generations? Can Twitter really give us a well rounded perspective of culture and if not, is being well rounded even important to businesses?

SI: I would tell that person they are completely ignorant of numerous research that shows Twitter skews to mobile professionals. There are more seniors using it than teens.
Sweeping statements of what businesses need such as you are asking, are not my forte. The generalization about businesses is that they need to exchange goods and services for money at a profit. Technology has historically made that easier. Social media has made conversations with customers scalable and over half a billion of the world’s people are now using social media in one way or another. Chances are that right now your reader’s business is being discussed in several places on social media. They can choose to remain ignorant or they can choose to join the conversation. I would also wager that every day that goes by finds more customers, prospects, employees and potential hires online, not to mention competitors talking with them.
Personally, I don’t know why a company wouldn’t want to join in low-cost conversations over the Internet but that is for them to choose.

MH: How does Social Media affect the English language? More specifically, is English more important today than ever before? Can countries like China or Indonesia hope to enter the social media world without a proper handle on the English language?

SI: I assure you 335 million Chinese using the Internet do not care very much about English on the Internet. I also assure you that the most among the most promising breakthroughs coming down the line involves universal translation over the Internet, so that I can type in English and my friend Kaiser Kuo in Beijing can see-or hear it-in Chinese. He will respond in Chinese and I will see it in English, making language as small a barrier as geography has become.

MH: What can be said about a society that reveals itself 140 characters at a time? Are there any interesting sociological insights here?

SI: I would say again that you don’t get the basic dynamic of how Twitter works. That would be like saying the entire value of a bowl of soup s on spoonful. The brevity allows conversation to go back and forth with great speed; for insight of value to be repeated often and fast. The 140-character clich’e seems to be used mostly by people who have not used the product, and they really should spend some time investigating before judging.

You can read much more from Shel at his website:

http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/twitterville/

Or visit him on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/shelisrael