However the question still remains is twitter a nice social media fad or can it be used as a serious business tool?

The first question is what is twitter? Basically it is an online SMS service where you can send a 140 character “tweet” to those people who have signed up to follow you and they can receive it via the twitter website, cell phone, email, instant messenger or even face book. It is great way in which you can find out what people you know are doing and they can follow what you are up to.

There is a cute little animation that gives a great overview of twitter – click here to see it .

So far so good, and so what I hear you ask. Well as exciting as it is hearing that someone has gotten up, cleaned their teeth and are getting dressed for work, there are more interesting business related applications.

• Let customers know of new changes to products or services

• Poll customers for their thoughts on what can be done better

• Use it to manage stunt marketing or limited time special offers

• Keep track of what people are saying about your products and services

• Publicise events that are coming up

• Get in touch with the Gen Y’s and Millenniums

• Reduce the cost of inter team communication

• Allow customers to query some of your databases (check out how Vayusphere is using this to access Zillow’s Zestimate database)

At Classified Ad Ventures, we use twitter to keep people aware of new articles on our Property Portal Watch, Jobs Portal Watch and Property Ad Guru news and information sites.

At ArtsHub we are experimenting with using twitter to run competitions and to encourage people to renew their subscriptions.
While all of this sounds wonderful in theory, the jury is still out on whether this is a killer application for business, one of the many tools that business will use, or just a fad that goes the way of yoyo’s and slinkies.

The real challenge is building a strong following and keeping them up to date with relevant information that cuts through the hundreds of tweets being received all day, every day.

In my view, it will be part of the social media armoury that consumer marketing people leverage to build a strong customer base. It will help whittle away at traditional media and their revenue streams.

The one question I am yet to see discussed in detail or get a real answer on is how will Twitter make any money from this?