Lately twitter has been taking up a lot of my time and thoughts.

When I first heard of twitter I was skeptical, it seemed hollow and useless, being almost too simple and rudimentary, but once I caved and got my own twitter account (along with the Bloom Coffee twitter) I am now realizing the vast potential that twitter has to offer, along with the endless possibilities that twitter has yet to offer.

In essence twitter is a flow of CURRENT information that anyone can take part in, at any time, with no limitations on how much or how little of a part you take.

Twitter puts it like this

“The result of using Twitter to stay connected with friends, relatives, and coworkers is that you have a sense of what folks are up to but you are not expected to respond to any updates unless you want to. This means you can step in and out of the flow of information as it suits you and it never queues up with increasing demand of your attention.

Twitter allows us to constantly be in the know of who is doing what, where, when, and why. It allows us to share information with friends, family, colleagues, customers, or anyone who is following you; or even, anyone who is searching for similar content.

How I came to realize the amazing thing that is Twitter: (a little story)

@alopezbl and I were at his house attempting to print something, BAM! Power goes out. We leave his house and head downtown. Whilst leaving we notice a huge cloud of black smoke in the sky maybe 2 miles away #rosevillefire was created (yes it was only used 6 times but thats not the point) We then spent the next 2-3 hours searching twitter for anything related to Roseville, Fire, Smoke, Power Outages, ETC. We then began tweeting about the fire and Re-Tweeting Photos from others. At this point I realized power might be out @bloomcoffee, after a quick phone call to @lucaselia I found out it was still on. I then began tweeting using the @bloomcoffee account, using key words like the ones we had searched for earlier Roseville, Fire, Smoke, Power Outages, ETC, assuming many other residents of Roseville would be searching for things related to this fire. I then informed people @bloomcoffee still had power and delicious coffee. By the end of the day we had 30 more people follwing @bloomcoffee.

Utilizing Twitter is an easy way to not only keep the people or customers that you already know informed, but to TARGET and find new people and customers that share common interests.

Twitter has amazing possibilities to be an online billboard, getting you or your companies name out in the open, right in front of the people who you want to see it. Once they become customers then Twitter becomes an amazing way to retain customers and offer them promotions or incentives, to keep up on what there doing and to connect.

Twitter is all about connecting people, thats it.

Check out these sights.

Happn.in is taking twitter and localizing it. Creating a platform that allows people within a city to see current twitter trends or topics, letting you know what people are talking about in YOUR city right now.

search.twitter.com allows you to do real time searches for any keywords that you may be looking for. It allows you to filter through your searches based on people, location, date, or attitude. This allows you to keep up on current news outside of your timeline.

twitter.grader.com lets you see who has the most followers in your area and where you rank on how many followers, how many tweets how many people your following, and more.

GO TWEET THIS!