2 4Ners, never met, had an idea that is a great re...

The other week Peter Kay had an idea.
Then I stuck my nose in and had another idea.
We put these together and set up the @CanYouRecommend twitter ID.

In a short time we now have over 100 followers which I think is great as all of this is through word of mouth and recognition that it's a great resource.

Earlier this week I heard of 5 companies getting trade from the feed in all parts of the world, including myself, so if you're not following ... why not?

Great idea, now following.

Cheers Lee and Peter

I'm in

Im in, great idea guys, so simple too.

Nice work boys! Love it!

And in case anyone is wondering how it works -

< geeklish >
We have a little RT script that searches for specific phrases, grabs the results, cleans them up then retweets them out.
A cron job then runs that script at a set time interval.
</ geeklish >

Damn simple but effective.

I'm there, fab idea :)

Denise

It's a brilliant idea.

Busy dreaming up ways that a similar system could be used for customer service feedback

How you gonna recommend something unbiased when there are 10 people who do it?
Who decides who to recommend what?

Not sure I follow. How you paying for your time to do all this?... not clear on it myself.

Lee, you said you'd never recommend anyone unless that is you'd used them. I can't see it - sounds like a "boys club" thing.

I probably got it all wrong as usual.

I'm not recommending anyone unless I've used them.

Let's assume that you're looking for a painter, for example.
You could tweet out "Can you recommend a painter in doncaster" - if you're lucky your tweet is picked up and RTd to all the @CanYouRecommend followers.

So, for you as someone looking for a painter your tweet is spread to an audience that might not have normally found your tweets.
As a business person you follow in case a request for your service comes along.

Obviously the more people that follow/ use the phrase, the better.

As for money - it took me any hour or so to get everything in place while I was uploading a load of files one evening and now it's set up everything is automatic and costs me nothing.
If you really want to put a cost on it, then it costs me time to monitor the feed but as I'm following it anyway (for work), again, doesn't really cost me anything - time or money.
If I'm looking for a ROI on the whole project, then:
I can reuse the files for other projects.
I have already gained work directly from the service.

I think Peter spent more time and effort choosing the logo for the twitter profile.

That sounds quite cool then.

Sounds good .. I've followed

I'm a twittering virgin but this has to be a really fantastic idea. Well done, boys and Peter - I'm really looking forward to meeting you. xx

Love the idea, I started following awhile ago, well done

Great idea I'm following MIGHTY COLIN