What Is Twitter

Twitter is a social network and micro-blogging platform that allows you to send 140-character “tweets”. With these tweets, you can let your friends know what you're up to, share links and cool resources, communicate with your customers, drive traffic to your website, and much more. According to the Twitter website, Twitter allows you to answer the question, “What are you doing?”

Twitter allows you to communicate without the hassle of writing out long blog posts or emails. The format of the Tweet allows you to get away with a link and a few words that can be sent on the go from your cell phone. And this tweet can potentially reach thousands of customers or business prospects, driving them to your website or blog, and drawing attention to your products.

In turn, you will receive notices whenever someone you are following Tweets something. You can receive instant notification in your browser, cell phone, email, and even on IM clients like AIM or MSN Messenger. Basically, it's more or less impossible NOT to keep touch with your Twitter friends & followers, even if you're out and on the go.

Twitter's extremely simple interface and ease of use is probably one of the reasons why it has caught on like crazy. Twitter was launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, and in 2008/2009 it practically exploded in popularity.

All kinds of celebrities use Twitter on a regular basis to communicate with their fans and followers, from musicians and actresses, to professional athletes and even political figures! Twitter allows us to sneak a peak at what our favorite celebrities are up to. Politicians like Obama use it as a campaign tool

Even large corporations and television networks use Twitter, such as CNN, Amazon, Dell, and ESPN. Twitter has also been recognized as serving a role in journalism. When US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River, the first photograph was taken by a Twitter user and sent to Twitpic – long before the media arrived.

Twitter users on the ground tweeted about the 2008 Mumbai attacks, compiling lists of the dead and injured and offering important information like emergency room numbers. Twitter has also been heavily used to organize and rally political dissent and keep a stream of communication open between protesters when governments have tried to suppress them, as in the 2009 Iranian presidential elections.

Okay, so none of that stuff really has to do with internet marketing, but the purpose is to show you that Twitter is indeed an incredibly powerful tool capable of reaching out to thousands or millions of people! Marketers not utilizing Twitter to its fullest benefit are definitely missing out!