What is Twitter?

“Are you on Twitter?’

“Have you heard of Twitter?”

” Blah, Blah, Twitter, Blah, Twitter?”

I recently was asked a great question by the twitter Indie Radio Chattanooga.  It was simple and direct.

“Why Do People Flock To Twitter?”

What is the reason  that over 3,000,000 people so far are heading to this site? Whya re companies like  Reuters,  Apple, and  Southwest Airlines using it?

Lets break this down into 2 parts. What is Twitter and instead of asking why do people flock to Twitter, lets ask the  question of how people are using it. . Now I am thinking we do this in list form, because people like lists.

What is Twitter?

– Twitter is simply put a social networking site that allows you to post in messages in under 140 characters. This is sometime referred to as micro blogging.

-These updates or tweets as they are called on the site allow the user to share messages, status updates, what they are doing  to anyone who has opted in to get them.

-Members can get these updates via the twitter website, an RSS feed, text message, email, a number of applications including  Facebook, and so on.

Why Do People Use Twitter?

(or as my wife would say”Why in the world do people care what your doing?”

-Networking: Its a great way to meet people. If your in a niche business you can easliy find people who have the same interests.

-Marketing: I don’t just mean big companies like Coke, Southwest and such. I’m talking about branding and marketing your self. Your putting yourself out there for all to see. I get a lot of business by just being on Twitter and talking about what I am doing and learning in regards to social media.

-Stream of Information: I seem to be getting breaking news and information on Twitter before most news sources. Great example was when the last earthquake hit the Bay Area. It was all over Twitter a good 10 minutes before CNN had it as breaking news.

-Its fun! You meet all kinds of people from all over the world. You can find someone to chat about something!

I highly recommend that if you have not checked out Twitter you should give it a try.  Its a great simple, straightforward site. There are many ways to “cross post” which means typing a single status message and have it show up in other social networking sites like: Facebook, Plurk, MySpace, Linkedin and such.  If you have questions about these tools, feel free to ask me.