In the midst of the development of mobile-phone technology, one feature that affected tech-savvy and busy individuals was the short message service (SMS).  More commonly known as text messaging, it has had an impact on business and the marketing of businesses. One website that adapted the idea of SMS to businesses is Twitter.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that connects friends and individuals simply and easily through Tweets.  Tweets in Twitter lingo is a micro-blog that allows users to send and read messages.  On Twitter you can post a message of up to 140 characters in length.

While Tweets are displayed in the user’s profile and delivered to others who have signed up to receive them, senders can actually restrict delivery of updates to a circle of friends. And also users, who are receiving updates, have the option to receive, view and post their updates via SMS, RSS feeds or through some applications specifically made for Tweets like Tweetie, Twinkle, Facebook and Feedalizr.

Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. It began as a research and development project inside Odeo, a podcasting company in San Francisco. It was launched in July 2006.  Twitter eventually gained popularity. In March 2007 it won the South by Southwest Web Award in the blog category.

In Twitter, users can create their own profile page that will display their latest text updates. Users can become friends with one another or simply be a follower.  Once you become a follower, you can start receiving and reading updates or Tweets from the one whose profile you are following. Although Twitter itself is a free service, you may have to pay text messaging charges to your phone carrier.

While Twitter is rapidly gaining popularity, it is also experiencing traffic overload. Twitter users are complaining that too many nonsense tweets are being posted.  Needless to say, there are complaints about high cell phone bills. Privacy and security issues prompted Twitter to introduce an optional PIN that its user can specify for SMS-originating messages. Despite these concerns, Twitter is still one of the leading names in social-networking.

Twitter is one of those rare innovations that may occur in a market place that changes the rules of engagement.  Before Twitter, there were blogs like WordPress and Blogger and social media like Facebook and Myspace.  Now these distinctions are fuzzy.  I find it fascinating that I can’t listen to the radio or watch the news without hearing about Twitter and someone’s Tweet!

In addition to being a free service that allows one to build a following of loyal viewers, Tweeter has joint ventures with some other internet companies, such as socialoomph.com, futuretweet.com, buzzom.com, tweetcounter.com and many more. By sharing their programming with these companies, Tweeter has allowed brilliant innovation to improve on an already brilliant business model.

There is an art form to Twitter and a number of sites and tools that are critical to getting the most out of Twitter.  These sites and tools can save you time, money and energy.   I highly encourage you to go to http://Celnicker.com and get the free video series on Twitter.