Why I used Twitter for market research on startups

As part of my job, I typically conduct market research on the Web to find out more about the markets that applicants of our startup fund are developing in. My routine would be something like this:

-Start with some random Google searches to have an overview of the market as well as to find out the key players
-Look at research reports (if available) that highlights the potential of the addressable markets
-Go to Compete or Alexa to see how the key players are doing in terms of traffic
-Search in crunchbase or other startup sites to see if similar services are available

All these are well and good but I feel that these information are not direct. There is a disconnect between what I have searched and the real pain points in the market. Where are the voices of users? Where are the people who are suffering the pain of current services?

I then decided to try Twitter because they host the most powerful conversation graph. This is what I did, using the specific case of a startup who is proposing a TopSpinMedia for ebook authors:

-Use Twitter search to identify authors or publishers
-Follow 5-10 of them to assess their thoughts about the market and the difficulties they are encountering
- Click on the articles they are linking. These are typically very relevant to the markets you are trying to research on

After 2 weeks, you can a real sense of what are the pain points in the market. The people you follow will articulate the problems they encounter and the issues that pop up for their businesses. More importantly, you can also read about their proposed solutions or their attempts to overcome these problems. All these information are very useful and are not available in any other services.

I really like this new approach and has been trying it for the past few weeks. Give it a shot if you are a startup and an investor. Your perspective of the market and its pain points will most likely be changed by it.

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