Everyone can agree that the top three Social Media Sites on the Internet would be Twitter, Youtube and Facebook.  As I used these social media sites I began to wonder how did such a dynamic website become the Internet giants they are today. Who created them and how did they become so popular.

These sites have changed the world as it was only 15 years ago. They have changed politics, business and the way we interact with other people who enjoy the same things we do. 

All three are unique in their own ways but of the three Twitter presents itself as being the most effective for business because its a free way to build a list. Facebook is the best at attracting new prospects and Facebook is best at building relationships with those prospects.

I will be doing a article similar to this one over all three sites but I find Twitter the most intriguing because of the connections that can be made. Namely, nowhere else can I go and tweet (speak) to a celebrity and actually have a reasonable chance of them speaking back to me in the comfort of my own home.

So, let’s begin with the History of Twitter and its functions.

There are a myriad of sites being built upon the Twitter platform that interact with your account on Twitter. A whole community has grown around twitter and the future seems very bright, but for the newbie Twitter can be confusing and lonely.  I know this to be true because I signed up for an account 2 years ago and have only recently become active on the site.

Did you know that Twitter on retains 40% of the people who sign up for a new account? So, with such a low retention rate how did Twitter ever become the social media giant that it is today? This and other pertinent questions will I answer for you so that you have a very good understanding of what Twitter is and how it can be used.

The questions I will be answering are these:

• Who is Jack Dorsey?
• Where did Twitter Come From?
• What is Twitter?
• Why is Twitter such as Big Deal?
• What is Twitter used for?
• What is Next for Twitter?

Who is Jack Dorsey?

Jack Dorsey is quite simply the man who came up with twitter. Jack is from St. Louis, Missouri and he is a software architect. At the early age of 14 he became interested in dispatch routing that taxicab services used to dispatch their cabs. He directed his life in the development of this technology.

Jack would later graduate from The Missouri University of Science and Technology and afterwards moved to California as a dispatching programmer. He then started his own company to dispatch  taxis,  couriers and emergency services from the Internet.

Jack then became interested with the instant messaging function that companies such as AOL and Yahoo were using with their services. This is where the concept of micro blogging mixed with instant messaging evolved from. He then partnered with Biz Stone founder of the company Odeo to start making a prototype of  Twitter in which they got funding to do the project from the company Evan Williams.

(Odeo is a directory and search destination website for RSS syndicated audio & video)

Where did Twitter Come From?

After Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone decided to work together and build some kind of blend of blogging and instant messaging, they co founded “Oblivious”. They built Oblivious in amazingly fast time of just 2 weeks.

Oblivious was later changed into Twitter inc. in March of 2006. They got funding from venture capitalist a couple of times and they worked on making Twitter simple with constraints like the 140 character restraint on each tweet.

The whole idea was for friends to be able to send out a short message instantly to each other regardless where they are around the world.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro blogging and social networking site built together to allow users to send short  Instant messages (140 characters or less) to each other all over the world.

The messages are called tweets and the name Twitter is suppose to symbolize the meaning of the word which is…

“a short burst of inconsequential information”

Twitter in short is a free instant messaging service that users can use to update and inform friends or “followers” about anything ranging from random daily activities to business updates and promotion.

Why is Twitter such a big deal?

Well the concept of how to use twitter is simplicity itself. You find followers and other people will find you to follow based upon common interest. You then tell them whats happening with you or your business in 140 characters or less. You can place link in your tweet and your followers based upon your recommendation, will go to the URL destination.

This makes this a power free resource for traffic to sites, promotions, web events, entertainment and even politics. Anyone can grow a potentially large following on Twitter and start making money online.  So, as long as you don’t spam your followers and get your account suspended by Twitter, you can start making a small or large income with this free platform.

Many successful tweeters use Twitter to build their brand or web presence. It is a way for your fans to keep up to date with what you are doing. Thus if you use twitter for what Jack and Biz envision it to be used for, you can easily see the power that Twitter can provide for you.

Also, This may be the only place on thweb were you can get up close and person a with your favorites celebrities and even communicate with them. That in itself makes Twitter a very unique and exciting place to spend your time on.

What is Twitter used for?

I have already hit upon some f the uses of Twitter but I want to go a little further in what all Twitter has been used for and what it can be used for.

1) Sharing Personal Information-This is the original purpose of Twitter when Jack and Biz started Twitter. You can just tell the world what your doing right now. If you are using your phone to update your Twitter account, why not tweet to the world that you are buying tickets the block buster movie that came out today and that you will give a review when you get out.

This kind of tweeting can become boring if you do it too much but if done right can show your followers that you are just an ordinary person and that you are not just trying to sell them something. (SPAM)

2) Sharing Valuable or Entertaining  Information on the Web- This is another great way not to spam your followers. People follow you because they are interested in the same things you are interested. They saw that you like baseball lets say from reading your profile.

Well wouldn’t it be good on your part that if you find an amazing article or video about baseball that you would tweet the title and URL of the article/video. This kind of tweeting is what makes tweeter so powerful because it is driving traffic to valuable and quality information. The web is filled with spam and trash and replicated information. 

By tweeting to good information, the people who put a lot of hard work into creating that information gets recognized by getting free traffic. This also gives you credibility to your followers for knowing what is good content so that whenever you do want to promote your own stuff, nobody minds. (Not SPAM) 

3) Website Promotion-As I mentioned above about promoting your own site, you need to be mindful of your followers and treat them right. The unfollow button is not hard to find and click. Also, Twitter will monitor your tweets to make sure your not a spammer as well.

I will do an entire post on Twitters guidelines for spam and other abusive behavior at a later date so be sure to sign up for my email update list.

When it comes to tweeting for traffic to your website or blog, Twitter and your followers do not have a problem with you promoting that. However, they do not want to be constantly bombarded with “visit my blog” “go to my site” and “This is the best site on the Internet” tweets all day every day from you. This is pure spam and provides no value to the Twitter community.

The right way to do it is to only promote your site 20% of the time. The other 80% of the time you should be “sharing” other people’s valuable content and building personable relationships with your followers. Besides people buy from people, they do not want to buy from spammers.

That being said Twitter is a great way to promote your work. If your work is truly unique and valuable, whenever you do tweet out a link to your site, your followers will be fighting each other to be th first to view it.

4) Affiliate Marketing- OK, of all the ways to tweet this may be the most abusive way of all. The whole idea behind this way of tweeting is to build a big following and promote affiliate products to them. To do this right, is to walk a very thin line with spamming your followers.

I know personally, I have evolved into the type of online purchaser that I expect to be educated before compelled to purchased anything online. Of course that means that if someone is not teaching me something of value but trying to sell me something of value, I tend not to consider buying that product.

My reason, there are plenty of useful products out there and there is an over abundance of free information that is essentially the same thing your trying to sell. So selling me a product is not based upon the product. It is based upon my perceived relationship with the seller.

So to my point of using Twitter to promote an affiliate product, I still believe you should be using a website or blog to do it. Educate your followers about the product or service and all the relevant information pertaining to that product. educate then sell affiliate products. Affiliate products in themselves are alright.

However, just finding an affiliate product on Dating let’s say, and then constantly sending your followers to a sales letter of your affiliate product is just spam. This kind of tweeting seems to be taking over with the economy in the condition it is in. I am surprised that more accounts have not been suspended from this kind of spamming.

(FYI Twitter does look at the percentage of link tweets to pure information tweets and have a policy that they consider you a spammer or not and will suspend your account)

5) Product Marketing-This is primarily used by Pure Internet Marketers and is very similar to affiliate marketing except the product belongs to you. This is kind of a different circumstance because of th fact that if you created this product, chances are you know everything about it and will educate people about it in your selling efforts.

Spamming is basically when Twitter users get lazy and just send people to sales pages without doing any kind of education. Internet Marketers tend to use the attraction marketing way of selling which is giving away quality content before trying to sell them more quality content.

6) Social Media Promotion-everyone has their own way to promote sites and products but another way to use twitter to build a relationship with followers is to send them to other free social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook.

Most Twitter users are on these sites as well and do not mind at all to be sent to your YouTube channel or Facebook page because they get to see another side of you than just tweets. You can use Twitter to build your social networking accounts on these sites and build upon the relationships you have with your followers in the process.

This is a very effective way to use Twitter.

7)  Building an email List-Everyone who as explored the how to make money online niche knows that the best way to make money and big amounts of money is to build a massive email list. So, you can use Twitter account to help build a email list for free.

There are a couple of ways to do it but remember not to mistreat your followers in the process. The most direct way to build a list from twitter is to just simply build a lead capture page and send followers to that page. I would advise you not to do this to often because this is very easily make you a spammer if your over doing it.

Another way to do it is to host a webinar/teleseminar and have them opt into a list to get access to the event. This is a very effective way because people love these events and you get to provide valuable content to them before sending them emails with your offers.

Another way to use Twitter is to send them to your blog or website and have an email opt in newsletter or product that that opt in for to receive. You don’t have to ask them to opt-in so this way is very passive in its approach.

If your content is very good, they will look for a way to stay in contact with your blog or website and your email newsletter is right there to help them do just that.

Two last ways to do this is just to create a survey and require they enter their email address to send. 

Create a video with valuable content and  then give them a call to action, which is to direct them to the email opt in form.

8 ) Online Dating- Some tweeters use Twitter as a way to look for someone to date. You can search by cities using search.twitter and just simply start a conversation using the @theirname function. Then if you think you want to get to know them a little bit more, send them to your Facebook account and become friends.

Or send them to Perfectmatch.com or EHarmony or whatever online dating site you use. Or send them you instant messaging id or Skype account. Really this is only limited by your imagination.

9) Market Research-This way of using Twitter tends to work when you have a large following or if you have software that looks at trends. However for the average user a way to do some market research for lets say writing an article on ezinearticles.com , you could go to search.twitter and see what the leading trending topics are right then.

You could keep up with this from day to day or hour to hour and see what the leading interest are. Also a great way to build your following by tweeting about the trending topics. A lot of people use search.twitter and you can use this as a market research tool if you just use your imagination and common sense.

10) Spying on Competitors-We all have competitors do we not. If you have a blog or website or whether you are a major company fighting for market share, everyone can spy on the competition using Twitter.

You might say that with all the Twitter noise, how can you keep close tabs on specific people. Well that’s easy, use the list function Twitter have provided for everyone. You can have up to 20 list as of today and you can follow up to 500 people on each list. Also, you can set the privacy on these list so that no one but yourself can view your list or know you have them.

This is a very good way to see what your competitors are up to and how to you can stay up with the industry leaders.

Here are some unique ways to use Twitter?

11) Politics-Social media is changing the way we communicate and is essentially changing the world. Even politicians see the raw power of social media. Politicians have started to en corporate Facebook, YouTube, Myspace  and Twitter into the campaigns.

Social media is now used to communicate their message at literally billions of dollars cheaper. Why spend millions of dollars campaigning the old traditional ways when you could build a massive and free campaigning using social media.

12) Higher Education-  Teachers and Professors using Twitter to communicate with their students. If a student needs to ask a question to the teacher or vice versa, its much easier to just simply pull out your phone or jump on the computer and tweet your question.

Twitter is becoming accepted by all age groups and thus communication is becoming more and more effective and easier.

13) Emergencies-There have been some cases where people have used Twitter to get help because they couldn’t contact anyone the normal ways. I would venture to guess that 911 and emergency agencies will open accounts on Twitter to get better access to people in need of help.

14) Public Relations- Companies and even athletes use Twitter for public relations. Just get on ESPN and you will hear from time to time someone issuing a statement via Twitter or some other form of social media.

Companies will do this as well because people are paying attention to social media sites and the fastest way to exercise free speech (Free Countries) is to hop onto Twitter and speak your mind. So, companies will issue updates or statements outlaying their position or what great things they are doing using Twitter.

15) Surveys-People are using Twitter to get ther followers to do surveys for them. Why create a product for your market without asking your market what they want or more importantly what they need. Twitter gives you free access to millions of people to get the information from.

Companies are doing this all the time so they clearly see the effectiveness of using Twitter as one of their main ways of communicating with their market. 

What is Next for Twitter?

Twitter will tell you that they like to keep it simple when they design features for the site.  They will take request for improvements and work to satisfy customer needs, but they will ultimately try to stick with the simplicity philosophy.

We are only on the threshold of social media and as the years go by, social media will only continue to grow and more and more people will jump on the band wagon. Twitter will grow with the wave so we all should continue to read about the updates they are putting out and work to corporate with their guidelines so we don’t get in trouble with them.

Ultimately, we hold Twitters fate in our hands because we are what makes Twitter so popular and with every trend, another new social giant is waiting to emerge.

A word of warning…lets not forget that Twitter is just a tool and your followers and your information on Twitter belongs to Twitter, so do not become overly dependent on your account with them.

So just use Twitter for what it was designed for and enjoy the ride.

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