Do you twitter? Do you think twitter is just a passing fad?
Twitter has become a popular microblogging service enabling people to keep in touch by "tweeting" about everything from mundane daily life to disaters in real time. It has become widely used for commercial and political purposes to keep customers, voters and fans up-to-date as well as to encourage feedback. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and is home based in San Francisco Although not much can be said in a single tweet, since you are limited to a 140-character limit, users update constantly, often accessing mobile devices to tweet. You get instant updates in real time to and from friends, celebrities and people with shared interests. Tweets can be private or made public to approved followers (tweeps).
If you think Twitter is just a passing fad that will go away, here are some things to consider:
- 200 million users worldwide
- Users tweet approximately 230 million tweets per day and 50 million active daily users according to the September 2011 statistics.
- 1.6 million search queries per day
- 1 out of 8 couples who got married in the United States in 2009 met via social media.
- Social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the Web.
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest behind China and India.
The combination of broadband connections, smartphones and iPad devices are allowing social media to explode. Some mobile phones are being released with Facebook and Twitter applications already included.
Twitter went viral when users started using the retweeting feature which repeats useful information to your followers. You can also send and receive private messages via direct message that no one else sees. The use of hashtags (#) to link up an event or idea via a word or set of words allowing all those messages which include the hashtag to be viewed as a group.
On June 1, 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet.
Among the best and most popular Twitter apps include Twitterdeck and Hootsuite, which are both free at most app stores. Twitterdeck features four columns: tweets from friends, tweets from mentions, recommended users and finally current trending words. If you have an iPhone, the app gives you more options such as adding columns to track certain users and combine feeds. Tweetdeck also features Facebook status integation.
Hootsuite, a feature-rich app which offers almost any features you could want in a Twitter app. After setting up your account you can integrate Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare all from whithin the one app. HootSuite offers many customization options, making it able to manage multiple accounts, mass replay to all recipients and set up scheduled updates. This is a useful app - even for most serious social media users.
