It seems everyone is twitting...and it’s not just Gen Y.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets - text-based posts of up to 140 bytes in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who are signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (default is delivery to everyone). Users can send and receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS (receive only) or through applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, Twitterfon, TweetDeck and Feedalizr. The service is free to use over the web.

As of March 2009, Twitter has received extensive visibility and popularity worldwide. Twitter has been described as the 'SMS of Internet' - the site provides the back-end functionality (via its APIs) to other desktop and web-based applications to send and receive short text messages often obscuring the actual website itself. This has earned it more popularity than it would have gained if users had to visit the site to use the service.

Twitter is ranked the third largest social network (MySpace would be second and Facebook would be the largest in the world) and puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million.

We recommend you have a look at the following Twitter sites:

http://www.exectweets.com/
Find and Follow Top Business Execs on Twitter by industry, topic, recommendation or popularity.

http://twitterholic.com/
Keeps you updated on tweets by industry leaders and experts. If you are new to Twitter this site is invaluable.
Helps you stay in the loop with the likes of Barack Obama and Britney Spears.

http://strawpollnow.com/
Polling site with differing topics, from the inane to the intense. A few fun answers to the question ‘What do you prefer?’.

http://twitweenie.com/
For complete random fun with Twitter.

Do you have a Twitter story you would like to share with the world (outside of Twitter, of course)? Are you finding innovative ways to use Twitter within your business? Then email Artisan and we'll publish it in a future Exposed.