I personally think if facebook, myspace, or any other social site upgraded their ‘status update’ feature, they could EASILY make twitter obsolete.

For businesses, getting your name out is the best way to grow your business, and why not use twitter as another form of doing this; it’s not going to hurt you.

I just get upset with people, my friends included that feel it’s a necessary tool to let their friends know their current thoughts on why they don’t like the rain outside.

Also on a more personal note, I find it so terribly sad that people (mainly celebrities) hire other people to update their twitters for them. I don’t care which celebrity you are, we do NOT need to know that you are at java house sippin’ your favorite mocha drink. And to be honest I lose respect for celebrities that not only use this service, but actually offer some one else money to operate it for them.

Personal rant done. For businesses, yes I can see a potential in reaching clients that are familiar with this form of communication; but businesses is just about where twitter should be kept with. I mainly just wrote to highlight the fact that all the negative feedback from the program comes from personal use; and this is all simply my opinion

It is NOT, however, a mass marketing vehicle. Here’s why.

1) For it to mean anything, you need to build a sizable following. Unless you’re Oprah, that will take a lot of time and effort in terms of posting interesting tweets worthy of following.

2) Then you have to assume that your followers will even read your tweet. That’s a challenge because heavy Twitter users (those most likely to follow you) are also the most likely to be following a lot of people, making your message less precious.

3) Then you have to hope that one of those followers will actually behave in a way that generates business (tell a friend, buy a product, etc.).

So yes, I suppose it’s possible that Twitter can be useful for businesses, especially if getting one or two key customers is important for you. But in terms of getting a mass audience that converts (i.e. drives business results), I can’t imagine Twitter’s effort-to-results ratio to be worth it.

All said, I could be wrong. If anyone out there has a concrete example of Twitter moving the needle for a business, I’d love to learn how.

Thanks for stopping by FlackRabbit and taking the time to comment. Agreed: making a true business case for Twitter is a tough sell; no matter how many celebs or airlines make news with it.

Personally though, Twitter has put me in contact with total strangers I now consider friends; it’s raised awareness of my blog to a small set of loyal readers; it’s even brought national recognition to my former employer, HallStrategies.com.

Twitter is overrated, sure. But useless? Not hardly.
.-= Margie´s last blog ..Three things to remember when relocating for a job =-.

Twitter may not be completely useless but it’s gotta be one of the most overrated things I’ve come across.

Just another way to track you and your habits. wait until someone is killed because of twitter. it’s inevitable… I thought only teens used it. Who cares if obamma has one. So he can tweet how screwed things are. We already know that.

I can careless what anyone other then my family is doing. For that we have these neat things called phones….

Twitter is useless is the forth suggestion when you search for twitter. What does that tell you seos?

If we cant comment on how lane a twit is then whats the point?

“Twitter is useless”