Did you tweet today?

What are you doing now? This seems to be the question du jour. Apparently these days, everyone wants to know what you're doing,
as you're doing it, whether it be the fact you've just stirred your cup of tea, or you've created a vaccine for swine flu. Twitter, the latest social networking craze, now allows us to find out what everyone is up to, from Bob in finance right through to Barack Obama in Washington DC, all day, every day, via computer and your mobile phone.

Create a profile
For the uninitiated among us, Twitter is a micro-blogging service via which users can send and read other users' updates, otherwise known as tweets. Setting up an account is foolproof — you log onto twitter.com, create a profile, add a picture (if you wish) and then starting ‘tweeting'.
These tweets can consist of up to 140 characters in length, which are displayed on the user's profile page and sent to users who have subscribed to them as 'followers'. People are sharing everything from personal information on their love lives, to ideas for new fundraising initiatives. You can pick and choose who you follow, and who you allow to follow you. Senders can choose to share their messages with everybody, or just their followers. This is all done via the Twitter website, SMS or other external applications.

Growing in numbers
The free service was launched in 2006, and has seen its popularity soar to more than 6 million users. While this figure may seem small when compared to Facebook's 150 million, the phenomenon has been causing waves in the media and is expected to continue to gain popularity. It has attracted the attention of celebrities and politicians — Barack Obama, Stephen Fry, Lance Armstrong, Britney Spears, Jonathan Ross and Coldplay are all 'tweeting'. (Britney was hanging by the pool with her family, Coldplay were busy donating proceeds from VIP ticket sales in America to Oxfam, and Stephen Fry was feeling virtuous following a session in the gym, in case you were wondering).

While some tweets can be pure, mindless fun, the website is also used for more serious purposes. Numerous high-profile media outlets have jumped on the bandwagon, and have begun to release breaking news and features via the site. CNN, for example, offers breaking news via Twitter, while The New York Times has also followed suit and currently has more than 1,893,471 followers. Closer to home, Gulf News has also joined the Twitter revolution.

Breaking news
Twitter has also begun to beat traditional methods of media in the race to first publicise information or/and pictures of an event. For example, via the site in January this year, people were able to see one of the very first pictures of the Hudson River aeroplane crash while local news networks were still trying to locate the plane. Twitter is further enabling the growth of community journalism, which is continuously gaining momentum thanks to the availability of blogging tools.
The site is also being used as a business tool — the ability to create a unique stream of what essentially is free advertising is appealing to small businesses, as well as global corporations such as Sony and Apple. Universities are using it to pass on important information to students, fire fighting services are alerting people to current emergencies, while some corporations are sending out press releases via Twitter.

Small businesses are big fans
Small businesses are particularly enamoured by Twitter.
A survey that was sponsored by UK mobile phone provider O2 found that of the 500 small businesses that took part, 17 per cent are already using Twitter. They also estimate that during March this year, more than 6,000 small businesses joined the service. The same survey revealed that two thirds of the respondents cited cost cutting as the main benefit to using Twitter, as they used the site for marketing purposes or to recruit new staff. Others cited elevating their business profile and communicating with a wide audience free of charge as being of particular benefit.

An addiction
So with an already massive following, and thousands of new users signing up every day, the Twitter revolution, it can be argued, hasn't reached half its potential. As an avid Facebook follower, I must admit I was dubious about the need for a new social networking website. However, Twitter is strangely addictive.
Having the ability to access an insight to what's going on in your friends' (and celebrity hangers on) worlds at the glimpse of your mobile phone's screen appeals to the nosey journalist in me. There are no pokes, photos and events to sift through, just comment.