To me, Twitter is a lot more than just a tool to promote a business or to make money. I have looked up six interesting things happening on Twitter. What do you think, has Twitter become a really important tool? On April 10th last year (2008), a graduate journalism student at UC Berkeley was arrested in Egypt. His name is James Karl Buck, and he was arrested without any charges for photographing a demonstration. He used Twitter on his mobile phone, he entered the word arrested. He only had 48 followers at the time, but they saw the message and contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy and press organizations in order to help him. He was released a few days later. Demi Moore is a frequent user of Twitter (along with her husband Ashton Kutcher of course). On Friday April 3rd, she received a message on Twitter from a woman threatening suicide. Demi Moore entered a reply saying «hope you are joking». As you probably know, Demi Moore has a lot of followers on Twitter, and some of them (not sure how many) tracked the message to a 48 year old woman in San Jose. They contacted the Police and they ended up taking her into custody for a psychological evaluation. Demi Moore posted another tweet, about two hours later, where she wrote «Thanks everyone for reaching out to the San Jose PD i am told they are aware and no need to call anymore. I do not know this woman.» Trent Reznor, the guy behind Nine Inche Nails, is using Twitter to help raise money for Eric De La Cruz, a man in need for a heart transplant. The total amount for the fundraising campaign through Twitter was more than $850,000. On February 12 202 cities around the world held Twestivals in order to raise money for charity:water, a non-profit organization aimed at brining clean drinking water to developing nations. This Twitter charity helped raise more than $250,000. Two college room mates used Twitter to save a dog in May. They found an injured Pit bull left by the side of the road. Since the dog was a Pit bull, they knew he would be euthanized if they brought him to a shelter. They used Twitter to raise money for his veterinarian bill. They received $485 in four days, this covered the veterinarian bill of $400 and the rest was spent on food to help the Pit bull during rehabilitation. If a hurricane hits South Carolina, people can now use Twitter to get updates on power outages and safety messages. If the power goes out, people could use their mobile phones to receive information. - jens -
That's interesting. Twitter has so much influence nowadays, my sites are getting a nice boost when I'm tweeting.
There is no doubt that twitter is becoming a piece of culture.. and not only in the usa. Even here in Germany people are starting to use a verb derived from twitter (twittern). Twitter is changing the internet just as facebook and co. have done.
Well, Twitter doesn't helps me much. Earlier I used to get some traffic but now nothing out of it. - Digital -
Its ALOT easier for some people if they use it right, of course I think the majority of people think its useless it just depends on how you use it, and what you use it for.
Twitter is probably the most important thing to happen to the web since blogger. Made by the same person too, coincidently.
I think Twitter is a very important tool today. Every day it is becoming more and more popular and i always see people sending me tweets trying to promote products and drive traffic to there websites. I can only see Twitter getting bigger in the future.
Yeah it's important specially when you have a lot of followers, you can easily send them a link about your products.
I agree with Shazz 100% I've yet to see someone who used Twitter for what it is meant for and not been successful. If signup and spam everyone that is following you, it will just made you mad. Here are a few articles on getting the most out of Twitter, I'll start with a Twitter Tools post, and one on managing a large number of followers. Twitter isn't going anywhere, it's only going to get bigger. It's time to figure out how to use it, or watch your competition pass you
I would compare it to the people who think facebook/myspace is stupid. The majority of people that hate it don't have any friends in their profile (or in real life ) and just don't know how to use that either
I think twitter can help sites a lot. But you have to show that there is a person behind the twitter account because people tend to unfollow those that obviously just tweet their blog updates and not exactly show anything else. LOL i twitter.. and so far, it has given me a bit of traffic as well.
In my opinion twitter is one of the great traffic source! if you have lot followers then you can expect some good traffic.
Certainly Twitter is an awesome free tool - especially if you know the little tips and tricks that most people dont even know about yet. Like there is lot of 3rd party apps that can automate otherwise time consuming tasks like getting more followers easier. Its big but got plenty still to grow and still heaps more potential for site owners and online business. The huge list of followers developed has given me some success: driving high coverting targeted traffic to my CPA offers, increasing my leads revenue by up to 25% on some offers from before when just with the normal ppc, other social bookmarking sites and craigslist type classified sites. You just have to learn to be really creative and convincing with your words when you have only got a fairly small character limit to work with......