Twitter as a new tool for engaging with magazine audiences

The U.S. quarterly Make — claims it is the first magazine to offer customer support via the social web messaging platform Twitter. It allows its tech-savvy readers to send the magazine instant messages, or “tweets” as they are called in Twitter-speak and get an all-but-instant reply.

However, we are aware of some other magazines with their own Twitter account. For instance, Canada's venerable This Magazine started distributing its own Twitter feed August 15, and one of its most recent updates says that it has 108 Twitter "followers" as of this week.

That doesn't make it any less true what Make senior editor Phil Torrone told Folio:

“This is new terrain for magazines. We would send out messages on Twitter whenever we’d post a new story, and we’d find people were talking back as if Make was a real person.”

Torrone said he answers each “tweet”—everything from subscription requests to changes of address which number 30-40 a day— himself. “With Twitter, users expect a response right away.” Make recently offered its followers on Twitter a discount on subscriptions, and sold 50 in two days.

Twitter is, in effect, a system for sending small text messages -- up to 140 characters -- via email, phone or the Web. Make’s Twitter feed, which has more than 2,000 followers, can be accessed here.

Make, published by O'Reilly Media, has a paid circulation of 100,000, with a readership of about 250,000, the company says. Its Web site averages about 2 million unique visitors a month.