Dell makes $1m from Twitter

This may not seem directly relevant to the mobile games industry, but bear with us…

Dell has revealed that its Twitter feed has generated more than $1 million of revenues for the company over the last 18 months.

How? By tweeting whenever discounted products are available in its online store, then tracking the customers who click through and buy them.

It's a sign of how a brand can use Twitter to generate real money, rather than just Web 2.0-fuelled press coverage. So could there be a lesson here for mobile games firms?

Clearly, mobile games publishers are very different companies to Dell, but the idea of using Twitter to build a community, and then driving sales through it, could be just as applicable to mobile gaming.

How many mobile publishers are even on Twitter? Not many. Perhaps more will give micro-blogging a spin in 2009.