Vapid indeed. What’s scariest isn’t that Twitter even exists, it’s that their business model is built around some unmet human need that somehow can be filled in 140 ASCII characters or less? Gawd help us all!

First, they don’t bring you closer to anyone. They make you further apart because now instead of talking with that person you look at your computer to find out about them. Sorry, that’s not connecting with anyone other than your computer.

Secondly, how many of us really want to know all the little stupid $#@# our friends and family do throughout the day?

I don’t know about most people but for me, when people ask what’s new, how are you, etc. . . I don’t go into a hour long rant about every little thing I’ve done and I can usually summarize in a minute or two, and if I can’t then it’s probably something important that I really want to talk about and not post a short blurb about.

I just don’t get it. . . not at all!

If we were that close with the person, I assume they would just call me to tell me.

Not only can you post an immediate reply to someone’s “Tweet”, as Twitter messages are called, you can also send messages directly to the email box of those that are on your Follow (friends) list.

If you don’t want to receive “Tweets” from someone who only talks about what they had for dinner or what cute antics their cat is up to, Twitter enables you to block those people.

And for those that think Twitter can’t possibly be used as marketing tool, I suggest you go to http://www.tweetvolume.com/ and enter your keywords or phrases, it will then tell you how many times that keyword or keyword phrase has been used on Twitter. Not only can this be helpful in connecting with others in your niche market, it can also connect you with potential customers.

Example: I just typed the word “diet” into the TweetVolume keyword search box. The results showed that word as being used on Twitter 6860 times.

I then went to Google’s Twitter Search, entered the keyword diet, and recieved 10 pages of results that contain the Twitter usernames of those interested in diets. Now are you “getting it”?

Yes, Google has a search engine especially for Twitter. I guess they don’t think it’s as stupid as the majority of people who have posted comments here seem to think it is.

http://tinyurl.com/2eqxad

I must admit that when I first took a look at Twitter, I couldn’t see how it could possibly help me build my business, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. Within a few hours after opening my Twitter account, I had figured out how it works plus added 26 subscribers to my newsletter’s mailing list, strictly from Twitter.

As with any marketing tool you use to communicate, providing relevant participation is the key to making the best use of Twitter.

Sharon Bray-McPherson
@sbraymcpherson