Twitter Is Leading The Way
In March 2009, Information Week reported a 131% increase in the number of people who visited Twitter over the last month. As I read this statistic, I began to wonder what is Twitter and why do people love it so much? The Twitter website self-describes itself as a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Other people refer to Twitter as a micro-blogging service.
Although I do not fully understand either description of this site, I do know that it is growing by leaps and bounds. After reading several blogs and trying to compare Twitter to something I do understand, I believe that Twitter is:
Twitter is basically a service that allows you to update your status with short messages, of up to 140 characters, just like a SMS text message. Twitter allows you to socialize your content with others through their following mechanism. If you update your status, then people who are “following” you are immediately notified of it.
If Twitter is akin to text messaging, then blogging is equivalent to emailing. So in effect, people who “tweet” want short and sweet messages and in depth conversations (or topics) are meant for a different forum (like a blog or an article). As a result, Twitter has evolved into a social medium.
Through personal and trusted experience using this service, you are able to update your status and see the status updates of the people you follow through various means including a web page, instant messaging, mobile phone, blackberry or various other third party applications available some of which are very good and some which are very average. Their are also programs available which can really help increase your followers automatically on Twitter, however, be very cautious here as some of the programs can dramatically affect your followers or even get your account banned. We have used many of these and found only a handfull that work, we would recommend the twitter benchmark as the leading program in this category, it does send your Twitter followers count soaring!, we know first hand that it does work extremely well.
So the key question for those of you reading this blog about Twitter is: What are the benefits and drawbacks of using Twitter for my current job as well as well as future employment?
Simply put, the potential drawbacks of Twitter are that anything you tweet will create a permanent record that could come back to bite you in the future. For example, I have a friend who recently cancelled a business meeting because he said that he was sick, but at the same time he tweeted that he was getting on an airplane. The business contact saw his tweet and called my friend for an explanation. Anyone who makes the decision to actively post on Twitter should take their audience into account and make sure they are not posting something that could jeopardize their job or business relationships.
On the other hand, since Twitter is a social medium, it allows you to connect with people of similar interests which can be a valuable networking tool that benefits your career. As a result of Twitter, you can build relationships with peers and enhance potential future business relationships, please also take a look at the latest Twitter Pro Tools by Hummingbird Software which increases Twitters capability and your productivity.
Anyone who is weighing the pros and cons of using Twitter should go ahead and see what all the hype is about. Just keep in mind that anything you say online will live online permanently. But those of you who are comfortable with the technology can leverage this service as a fun way to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues.
