Business valuation professionals can never be mistaken for early social media adopters. While a few have figured out LinkedIn and some are trying to, most are oblivious. I cannot gauge participation on Facebook but I suspect most folks there are there for entirely personal reasons. Other social media platforms fare just as poorly.
I have been interested in the possibilities of Twitter and have wondered if the business valuation community has any presence there at all. From a bit of research, the answer seems to be "no." As an example, as I type this post, the AICPA is having its 2009 annual business valuation conference in San Francisco. Attendance is between 500-600 (not verified). Their meeting planners have done a good job creating a social media platform and one of the things they did was create and communicate a hashtag for the conference (#bval09). It is Monday morning and the conference is in full swing and after search for the hashtag, I see two uses of it by one person (Jan Davis, a friend and smart research professional). Jan is speaking at the conference.
So, Twitter is not on the radar of most business valuation professionals. I am not surprised. Maybe that is an opportunity for us. Hmmm.
I talked to several folks at the AICPA BV conference about Twitter and found a lot of misinformation. Several people told me they were not interested in Twitter because they didn't want to read about what friends had for lunch. The perception in BV based upon my unscientific survey seems to be that it is a consumer tool and most are not aware of the business uses of Twitter.
However, when Chris Mercer asked the audience during his session on Buy Sell agreements if they were on Linked In - well over half the audience raised a hand.
Posted by: bvgirl | November 18, 2009 at 12:49 PM