AboutTwitterTwitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover whats happening now.Twitter asks whats happening and makes the answer spread across the globe to millions, immediately.What Twitter Does Whether its breaking news, a local traffic jam, a deal at your favorite shop or a funny pick-me-up from a friend, Twitter keeps you informed with what matters most to you today and helps you discover what might matter to you most tomorrow.The timely bits of information that spread through Twitter can help you make better choices and decisions and, should you so desire, creates a platform for you to influence whats being talked about around the world.Twitter can give a voice to even the weakest signals because of its simplicity. Users can access Twitter on powerful broadband connections via a video game console or through faint connections in rural areas via SMS on a simple mobile phone. You can also access Twitter through more than 50,000 third-party Internet and mobile applications.Just remember, how you use Twitter is completely up to you. Follow hundreds of people. Follow a dozen. Post every hour. Post never. Search for your favorite topics and create lists. Or not. You are in control on Twitter.Twitter for Businesses Twitter is a simple tool that helps connect businesses more meaningfully with the right audience at the right time.

For real world tips and case studies from businesses that have effectively used Twitter to build their brand and connect more personally with their customers, check out Twitter 101 for Businesses, our guide to doing business on Twitter.Wheres Twitter? Twitter may be based in San Francisco, but it's used by folks in nearly every country in the world. So, were working quickly to add as many additional language options as we can.

HistoryTwitter was born about three years ago,

HOW TO USE TWITTER FOR BUSINESSLearn more about the How to Use Twitter for Business - Webinar on 10/22/09How Does Twitter Work?How Does Twitter Help You Work?If you join Twitter you can follow other tweeple, which causes their updates to appear on your home page. In turn, they can follow you, a form of permission-based marketing. You can also direct message them, but always in 140 characters or less. How Does Twitter Help You Work?Within this participating audience of exhibitionists are a growing number of people who are using Twitter for business. there are professionals who are using Twitter as a communications tool. (Imagine that!) Heres how you might use Twitter for business:Follow industry leaders who post links to important resources and influence conversations

Post questions for quick answers and answer others questions to establish your credibility and expertise Create links to your Web site or blog (dont over do it!)

Keep up on the buzz in your industry

Network with like-minded people.

How to Find (The Right) People on Twitter

The Twitter search box will search matches in others profiles, but not in individual tweets. Here are a couple of 3rd party tools that allow for more advanced searches:Who Should I Follow?: Finds and suggests like-minded people based on your tweets.

Summize: Allows you to search tweets for keywords and offers lots of customization tools.

How to Get People to Follow YouThe more people who follow you on Twitter, the more influence and networking opportunities you have. Thus, it makes sense to try and build a following.Follow them.Post some good tweets right before following someone else.Complete your bioAdd your Twitter feed to your blog or to other social media profiles.Reply to people you are following, especially if theyre not yet following youIdeas on Getting the Most Out of TwitterWhile the guidelines of Twitter etiquette are still evolving, guidelines from other social media sites can used:Treat others with respect

Participate in the community

Do more than promote your own agenda.

Professionals and consultants have had the most impact at Twitter; most businesses are still trying to figure out how to use Twitter as a communications tool. If youre not a one-person shop, here are a few ideas to help get your creative juices flowing:A restaurant tweets their daily specials

A ticket agency tweets about-to-expire tickets

A realtor tweets new homes on the market

A chamber of commerce tweets local events and promotions.

Internet MarketingA Web site that converts prospects into customers Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Email Marketing

Business Blogs or Blog Marketing

Web Strategy Consulting

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for BusinessThis post is part of our ReadWriteEnterprise channel, which is a resource and guide for IT managers and technologists in the Enterprise. The channel is sponsored by Intel. As you're exploring solutions for your enterprise, check out this helpful resource from our sponsors: All New 2010 Intel Core vPro Processors and Microsoft Office 2010: Your Best Choice for Business PCsTwitter URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a web address that points to a unique page on the internet. Find out how to shorten links. APIAn Application Programming Interface. Contains all Twitter data and is used to build applications that access Twitter much like our website does. Application (Third-Party)A third-party application is a product created by a company other than Twitter and used to access Tweets and other Twitter data. Read about how to get help with a third-party application.FF #FF stands for "Follow Friday." Twitter users often suggest who others should follow on Fridays by tweeting with the hashtag #FF.Favorite To favorite a Tweet means to mark it as one of your favorites by clicking the yellow star next to the message. You can also favorite via SMS. Read more about favorites. Find PeopleThe Find People tab (to find people) is Twitter's search feature used to locate friends on the site. Learn how to find others on Twitter, or read about what to do if you're not in Find People search. Follow CountThe numbers that reflect how many people you follow, and how many people follow you. Found on your Twitter Profile. Read more about following. FollowerA follower is another Twitter user who has followed you. Find out more about following, or learn how to follow others.FollowingYour following number reflects the quantity of other Twitter users you have chosen to follow on the site. Find out more about following.GoodiesA tab at the bottom of your Twitter homepage containing links to widgets, buttons, and other nifty third-party website integration tools. http://twitter.com/goodiesTwitter's website tailored to fit your mobile device. Visit it at mobile.twitter.com. Find out how to use mobile.twitter.com. Mobile Web Twitter's website tailored to fit your mobile device. Visit it at mobile.twitter.com. Find out how to use mobile.twitter.com. Open-Source Used to describe a company whose API is open for developers to access and use to build new tools with. Twitter is open-source.Profile A Twitter page displaying information about a user, as well as all the Tweets they have posted from their account. Learn how to change your profile information. SMSShort Message Service (SMS) is most commonly known as text messaging. Most messages are a maximum of 140 characters. Learn how to send a Tweet via SMS.WidgetA bit of code that can be placed anywhere on the web. Updates regularly with one's Twitter updates in real time. Read more about badges and widgets. AboutDom Sagolla on August 8th, 2008Meet Dom Sagolla.Dom started programming in grade 5, using Logo on an Apple IIc in a small town outside of Boston, MA. He bought Dom.net for $100 in 1996 while studying hypertext and music at Swarthmore College in Pennsylv with ania, and became an engineer at HP Laboratories in Palo Alto upon graduation.After HP, Dom returned to the original Bay Area to study at Harvard in 2000, and intern with the inventor of Logo, Seymour Papert at the MIT Media Lab. Inspired by the Demo or Die spirit of the Media Lab, Dom started his own company in 2001, which led him to consult for, and eventually join Macromedia in 2003.In 2005, Dom left Macromedia to join Odeo and help create Twitter. When Odeo was dissolved, Dom joined Adobe for research and development pre-1.0 products. Dom co-founded iPhoneDevCamp in 2007, bringing the ideals of Open Source to the iPhone development community. Since then, the community has met internationally and locally here in San Francisco, tripling in size this year.DollarApp was founded at the Start Conference in 2008, focused on producing specialized iPhone Apps for a common price.Sign up for email updates, or just follow dollarapp on Twitter.About DollarApp

Dom has a small team of iPhone experts in San Francisco shipping social apps. Twitter / Dollarapp

Skype call with our secret agent in Warsaw, discussing plans within plans. 10 hrs ago

@cyrusstoller learns fast. in reply to cyrusstoller 2 days ago

"The simpler you make your idea, the easier it is... to understand the market and get it out there." @Dom on BBC News: http://j.mp/9AHOEp 2 days ago

More updates...

Top Mid-Market News

Wireless Broadband Spectrum May Double in Next Ten YearsA Presidential Memorandum signed by President Obama would nearly double the amount of wireless broadband spectrum, through an auction, for governmental and commercial use, the White House said. The actual amount will depend on effective implementation and additional design details, but based on past auctions, some analysts believe the revenue potential could reach in the tens of billions of dollars.

Top IT Management NewsEmployee Cuts at MicrosoftMicrosoft has not made an official statement but job cuts are the buzz on the websites where Microsoft employees, or former employees, often post about the latest internal machinations and gossip.
ArticleHow Twitter Was Born 140characters.com @Jack was still just an engineer, and the service was only a few months old when the group acquired Twitter.com and re-branded. Back then, we had no character limit on our system. Messages longer than 160 characters (the common SMS carrier limit) were split into multiple texts and delivered (somewhat) sequentially. (Submitted by adamjackson1984) More... Behold the only screenshot in the book 140 Characters. It was generated using Wordle. The rest of the book consists of words, and is written about words.This site began as an experiment in collective word design. Over the years, we as a community have generated new hypertext conventions like the @ reply, the mention, and the hashtag.This work exists to document and standardize this new language as a short form of communication. The short form can be comedic, dramatic, momentary, or timeless.As @Jack says in the Foreword to 140 Characters, weve only described 1% of this new medium. The remaining 99% is up to you.Update: An expanded form of this History is now available as the Introduction to 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form.@Jack was still just an engineer, and the service was only a few months old when the group acquired Twitter.com and re-branded. Back then, we had no character limit on our system. Messages longer than 160 characters (the common SMS carrier limit) were split into multiple texts and delivered (somewhat) sequentially. There were other bugs, and a mounting SMS bill. The team decided to place a limit on the number of characters that would go out via SMS for each post. They settled on 140, in order to leave room for the username and the colon in front of the message. In February of 2007 @Jack wrote something which inspired me to get started on this project: One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.

Community standards and participation guidelines10 guidelines which we expect all participants in guardian.co.uk's community areas to abide byCommunity standardsThere are 10 simple guidelines which we expect all participants in the community areas of guardian.co.uk to abide by, all of which directly inform our approach to community moderation (detailed below). These apply across the site, while moderation decisions are also informed by the context in which comments are made. Community FAQThere is a comprehensive list of frequently asked questions about participation and community moderation, which also provides more detail about particular examples of the standards listed above. Surprising Statistics About Twitter in America1. Twitter is Ubiquitous
Like Terrell Owens, Carrie Underwood, and Coke Zero, Twitter is almost universally on the radar of Americans. 87% of respondents had heard of Twitter, compared to 88% who had heard of Facebook. (Note that the survey population was 12 and up, including a representative portion of seniors). Thus, we can safely assume that with the exception of Amish, prisoners, and sea creatures, the entirety of the country knows about Twitter.Twitter Statistics Facebook 300x223 7 Surprising Statistics About Twitter in America2. Twitter Sucks at Converting Awareness to Usage
Known by 87%, just 7% of Americans use Twitter. Thus, fewer than one in 13 Americans who know about Twitter, actually use Twitter. Compare that ratio to Facebook, where 88% have heard of it, and 41% have a profile (a conversion rate approaching 50%).3. Twitter is the Important, Vocal Minority
While only 7% of Americans are using it, the Twitter population is still 17 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the combined populations of Connecticut, Oregon, Kentucky, Kansas, and Oklahoma. And while substantially smaller than the Facebook brigade, the Twitter crew is tuned in to brands like nowhere else on the social Web.49% of monthly Twitter users follow brands or companies, compared to just 16% of social network users overall. Put another way, Twitter users are 3 times more likely to follow brands than Facebook users. Combined with their above average income and above average education, Twitter users propensity to interact with brands make them a huge potential source for Mass Influencers (although Forresters research says Facebook is a better pool).4. Brand Interaction is a Major Part of Life on Twitter
In addition to following brands, Twitter users research and engage with companies. 42% learn about products and services via Twitter. 41% provide opinions about products/services. 19% seek customer support.Twitter users talking about marketing and brands far exceeds the usagtwitter statistics race ethnicity 300x212 7 Surprising Statistics About Twitter in Americae on the other social networks, said Tom Webster, the VP of Strategy & Marketing at Edison (and the study author), when I interviewed him for this post.I maintain that as Facebook continues to tie together the real-time Web the open graph, Twitter usage will inexorably shift from person to person connectivity, to customer to company connectivity. I believe Twitter will ultimately be the way that we interact with brands, and will power the social CRM movement. Tom agrees, and included that concept in the Executive Summary.twitter statistics race ethnicity 300x212 7 Surprising Statistics About Twitter in America5. Twitter is Disproportionately Popular with African Americans
Forresters Tamara Barber recently published a report showing Hispanic usage of Facebook and other social networks far outpacing usage by non-Hispanic White Americans.This Edison Research shows that for Black Americans, the social network of choice may very well be Twitter, as 25% of Twitter users are African Americans (approximately double the U.S. population).Tom Webster theorizes this may be due to Twitters functional similarity to text messaging, as several studies have shown Black Americans use the mobile Web at rates roughly double that to non-Hispanic Whites.Just the Facts: Statistics from Twitter Chirp

Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users 300,000 new users sign up per day

Approximately 60% of them are coming from outside the U.S

Twitter receives 180 million unique visitors per month

75% of Twitter traffic comes from third-party applications

60% of all tweets come from third-party apps

Since the new Blackberry application was launched, it has accounted for 7 to 8% of new sign

Twitter now has 175 employees, up from 25 one year ago

There are 600 million search queries on Twitter per day

There are over 100,000 Twitter applications

Twitter gets 3 billion requests a day through its API

37% of active Twitter users use their phone to tweet

ery Interesting Social Media Statistics: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin and moreSocial Media StatisticsFacebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours.

Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis.

LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide..

Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis.Six months ago, this was 250mThis means over 40% growth in less than 6 months.

Flickr now hosts more than 4 billion images.

More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day.

Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that its 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.

Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month.

Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.

Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase.

There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.

There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.

Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.

The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.

15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technoratis new State of the Blogosphere.

At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10 billion tweets in a single year.

About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.

India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.

More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.

70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.

38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.

More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.

Mind-blogging statistics uhh. Think how they will change in next 2-3 years ! We will literally be living our lives online rather than offline !