René Descartes felt that the proof of his existence was that he thought from time to time.
Quite a number of people, including Richard Ziade, Richard Buchanan, Charles Rhyne, Graham Chastney among many others, are now confirming their existence by twittering.
It’s been around for some time although some of us were initially reluctant to twitter. Not so many professionals who have been using twitter extensively for some time. Now over the past few weeks it seems to have entered an explosive growth phase like so many other social media such as Facebook and YouTube.
Twitter is disarmingly simple. You can tweat or receive tweats on your cell phone via instant messaging. 140 characters to tell whoever is listening whatever you feel like telling them. It can be almost like dropping pebbles down a very deep well. Sometimes you hear a splash. Sometimes you don’t. The Twitter FAQ gives a few more details but there is very little more to tell. It’s completely free and there are now a number of widgets (Apps) that simplify the process of twittering.
Twittering is now being used more extensively as an additional channel in Internet marketing. Lee Odden has provided a Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR, while Darren Rowse sets out some Tips for Bloggers. Clearly we’ve only seen the beginning of all this twittering activity.
So what will be the future of this new method of communication. Although it’s free it should not be difficult to monetize Twitter given the huge volume of traffic. The key concern must be whether this will become an increasingly noisy tower of Babel. Will the bandwidth be available to carry all the tweats? Twitter was overloaded apparently when Steve Jobs gave the keynote address at MacWorld 2008. It was again down this morning for a time. Twitter means instant communication. It can only work if instant always means instant.
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