The Rise of Twitter, What is So Important About Twitter To Small Business

“The Rise of Twitter”

Twitter is making a big splash in the computing, communication, social and marketing space and I’m going to try to give you some insight into why you should care.
But, first I’d like to tell you a little about myself and why I’m finding Twitter so interesting
My name is Eric Baryol
I’m the Owner of CMIT Solutions of Reno a technology consulting company.
We support small and medium sized businesses here in Reno, I have clients as small as a single lawyer to manufacturing companies and construction companies with over 300 employees.
We provide services and products that prevent technology disasters and improve the performance of server, networks and PC for our clients. Basically we become the technology arm of our client companies.
I was born and educated here in Reno,
I went to Catholic grade school and high school and attended the University of Nevada Reno where I graduated with a degree in Computer Information Systems and Accounting.
I’ve always loved technology, It goes way back in 1979 I got my very first computer, an Apple II+.
This was way before IBM brought the PC into the market place in 1981.
The Apple II+ was a sweet system, it had 48 kilobytes of Random Access Memory, a 5 ¼ inch floppy disk drive, a green and black monitor, it was great. The Apple II came with Applesoft Basic programming language, one of the first word processors a 300 baud modem and cost about $1200… It was so basic that you had to attach a custom hard wired fix internally to the motherboard and keyboard to get a shift key for lowercase letters to appear, what a deal!
I’ve worked with technology my whole career. I started out as a software developer with IGT right after college. With IGT I worked on custom software development and the implementation and customization of business systems. I left IGT in 1998 to become a consultant, leading software development efforts as a software Architect and Technical Lead for companies and organization like American Express and the IRS. In 2000 I went to work for a software development tools company where I led software creation projects as a project manager. In 2001 I went to work for one of my clients heading up a huge 120 million dollar software program to replace the entire company’s operating systems. In 2004 I went to work back here in Reno for a pharmaceutical testing company heading up their Information Technology department and when that company decided to move to Philadelphia I bought my own technology company CMIT.
So with this background I know a little about computers, systems and how people use them to make their business and lives better and more profitable.
Now let’s leave the good ol’ days of my technology career and first personal computers behind and jump to 2006 where the internet has become the main vehicle of the world’s communications. The internet has created thousand if not millions of new ventures and ended just as many.
With the internet there are numerous communications vehicles in effect, Web Sites, VoIP, (Voice over IP), Email, Instant Messaging, Blogging, Forums, MySpace, Facebook etc. etc. and in March of 2006 comes Twitter.
Twitter really didn’t gain much attention or use until 2008 and in late 2008 it began an exponential growth explosion. Let us explore that growth a little.
In February of 2008 Twitter had 475,000 users, in February of 2009 it had over 7 million users, that is a 1,382% growth rate year over year. This makes Twitter the fastest growing community web site on the internet by far. It is #3 in popularity behind MySpace and Facebook and at its current growth rate it will surpass MySpace and Facebook to become the #1 community site easily by the end of the year.
This growth is also reflected in the print media, In the UK, from January to November of 2008 there were just 40 articles with the word Twitter in them, in the following month December 2008 there was 85 articles, in January 2009 there were 206 and in March there were 684. Something is going on here!
But you might be saying what is Twitter and why should I care?
In the simplest sense all twitter is a real time text chatting tool. But that doesn’t give it credit for what it is really becoming…
Twitter is based on common internet technologies and can be accessed through web browsers and smart phones. So it is not limited only to being on your desktop or laptop computer but it is one of the fastest and easiest applications for people to use on their mobile phones. This means that Twitter is on the road to be in everyone’s pocket at all times. This realization is opening people’s eyes to Twitters potential.
First, Twitter has a very simple and elegant way of communicating but it real power is how it can create ad-hoc communities. It pulls people together with a common and easy platform for communicating around common people, ideas and events.
Twitter has the amazing potential to link people to each other and people are beginning to realize the potential as a marketing and sales tool also.
Who is using Twitter? Adults between the ages of 35 and 49 make up almost 42 percent of the site's audience - and about 62 percent of them are accessing the site from work. The average user hits Twitter.com about 14 times a month and spends about seven minutes on the site. In February 2009 there were over 55 million posts on Twitter. Twitter is becoming a universal device that can be access by anyone from anywhere.
And what is it like to use Twitter?
Do you remember back to childhood when you were in English class? You would be sitting behind your best friend passing notes back and forth? That is one of the experiences of twitter, and it is just as much fun.
Twitter communicates using a micro blog format. You can only type a message that is 140 characters in length. When you post an update message on Twitter that’s called a “Tweet”. You quickly find out that there is this whole TW thing with Twitter where everyone bastardizes word to begin with TW…
Anyway the 140 character blog limit really means that you don’t have to be a great author to be a good Tweeter. This really makes using Twitter easy and quick.
Twitter allows you to “follow” and subscribe to anyone’s tweets, anyone that is already on Twitter, and your probably asking who might that be?
John McCain is on Twitter, I got a Tweet from him on Sunday letting me know he was in Hong Kong and he was getting ready for a briefing of the US team there
Shaquille O’neal wanted Mark Cuban to call him
President Obama is on Twitter, however his tweets are not really his I think…
Just about every politician and actor is getting into the Tweet-osphere…
But following celebrities is not what I think is the incredible power of Twitter…
It’s the ability to create ad hoc communities. I really saw the power of this last week. I was in Nashville Tennessee for a seminar. This seminar was on the sales and marketing of computer technologies and it was attend by around 300 people with another 300 or so watching live over the internet. Twitter was part of this event.
You see you can add a special code into tweets, others can find that code. These are called Hash Tags, what you do is add a hash # sign and a code or word and then anyone can see all of the posts with this # code in it. i.e. #RenoAirRaces or #RenoBalloonRaces bring up all Tweets with #RenoAirRaces or #RenoBaloonRaces in it. If everyone discussing the Reno Air Races or Reno Balloon Races puts in that hash tag. Anything can be grouped, political rally’s, events, themes, ideas.
This means that at a conference, or a concert, or a political rally or anything, everyone at that even can “hear” what everyone is thinking at any one moment. It’s incredible. People get into side conversations, debates and give suggestions all during an event. It’s just like passing notes back in English class except that the whole class sees every note at the same time!
This is the power of Twitter. Imagine if you walked into a store and over your phone you automatically were sent messages about special going on at just that moment. Or at a political rally where you could participate with everyone in a running conversation on the topics under discussion. Or a way to listen to your community of church members as they are going through their day. Think about watching a TV show with thousands of others at the same time. It makes just about anything more fun and what is fun is adopted. This is the power of Twitter.
I hope that I’ve been able to explain to you why you should care about Twitter and that it should be on your radar now also.
So if you haven’t checked out Twitter yet, you probably will in the near future, I’d bet on it.

http://reno.cmitsolutions.com/