Everywhere you look these days, someone’s talking about Twitter. Last month (February ’09), over 7,000,000 people logged in with some answer to the now famous question, “What are you doing?” It’s grown by 1382% since the same time last year, making it the fastest-grown community site in the U.S., according to Nielsen. Now, with widespread adoption of the news media, Twitter is bound to grow even faster.
Detractors are quick to point out that Twitter is noisy, a distraction, and they really don’t care what some stranger had for breakfast. All true; you can’t argue with the obvious. But, there are ways to filter out the noise, turn it off when you need to focus, and select folks to follow with more interesting things to talk about.
So what’s Twitter all about from a business perspective, and why should you care? Honestly, that’s a huge question, one that will take more than a single post to answer. We’ll get a start on that answer this week from Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter:
As a bonus, notice the marketing lesson in this clip: Twitter has grown really fast because it listens and responds to what its customers want.
Do you twitter? Are you using it for business? Please leave your twitter name with any comments. If you’d like to follow me, I’m @ShariV.
Related Off-Site Article:
Nielsen: Twitter’s growing really, really, really fast
Very nice explanation! Look forward to the second post.