Twitter Conference Shows What Twitter Can Do For You

DETROIT (WXYZ) - Twitter has exploded as a social media site, 83 million people signed up sending some 65 million Tweets a day. But what can it do for you?

Christopher Barger , the social media director for General Motors, says Twitter has changed the way GM does business. “Frankly at this point,” Barger says, “the environment we’re in people are not going to pick up the phone and let us know if they have a problem with something that we’ve done. They’re just going to go out on Facebook and Twitter and start complaining. So we have customer service agents who go out and look for this and try to address customer concerns.”

GM’s Buick brand is a sponsor of the 140 Conference taking place in Detroit. The conference has traveled the world and lands in Detroit Wednesday. Its focus is to help people figure out how to use social media outlets like Twitter.

“What’s come out of the events more than anything else,” conference founder Jeff Pulver tells us from New York, “are relationships that created businesses, opportunities, jobs. People have discovered the next thing they want to do through these events.”

Pulver has invited Action News anchor Stephen Clark to speak at the Detroit event about his “backchannel”, an interactive community that converses on Twitter during evening newscasts.

“Like it or not,” He tells us in a Skype interview, “you are changing broadcast journalism every day you go live on the air and you promote #backchannel. You are providing a chance for your viewers, who are used to a non interactive experience, to go interactive.”

For more information on the #140 Conference, click here . Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sclarkwxyz and search #backchannel, #7at7 and #earlyrisers during our newscasts each day.