So one of the big buzz words right now is twitter and tweeting. I have to ask myself, wtf? I don’t know what it is and I just don’t get it. My collegue assures me that you have to use it to get. So I did and this is what I thought.

So what is it good for? Besides the social aspects of it, twitter can be a really useful tool for business. Say for instance you have a hosting company and you need to run some maintenance. Besides an email warning your clients about this, you can twitter the status of the maintenance, give your customers feed back in real time. All this can be delivered in the form of a txt message to their phones too which is fantastic. The massive fires in Australia were devastating. The fire relief and information services could have tweeted status about the ongoing fires, keep people posted in real time. In the commercial aspect and more specifically the affiliate marketing you can let your affiliates know about upcoming specials, new voucher codes and products.  These are just a few examples of how twitter can give you a real boost to your business and best of all, it is free.

On the social side I am not nearly as convinced about twitter and still see it more as a business tool. Everyone has Facebook and your Facebook status can be seen as another form of twitter. Having to update both twitter and facebook status is just a redundant step and I am just not convinced it is a great social tool. Maybe given some time my view point on this will change.

So in summary, twitter is a free method to communicate with your followers. The potential to effectively use this for your business are great and I would really recommend people to use it. On the social side, stick to Facebook statues, don’t make your friends sign up for ‘another’ account that they need to check on a regular basis.