I remain continually amazed at how quickly technology can evolve over just a year or two. With a single stroke, a newly conceptualized, multi-media phenomenon is bred. Two years ago, if you had asked someone what “tweeting” was, they’d have probably looked at your sideways and told you it’s the sound a bird makes. Now days, Twitter has become a forum for which celebrities and companies alike, gain the opportunity to “talk” to their followers or customer base.”Twitter has become an important marketing tool… promising a level of intimacy never before approached online,” states The New York Times. Let’s face it, even the President of the United States, Barack Obama has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and utilized those resources as part of his campaign strategy.

Websites such as Twitter and Facebook have grown with insurmountable fervor and have reached proportions that even the creators couldn’t have predicted. Twitter, a San Francisco-based company originally consisting of a 10-person team, had one goal in mind when creating the concept, …”being a real-time information network powered by all people around the world..in an effort to let you share and discover what’s happening now.” And share, they have, as Twitter is now being translated into a multitude of languages and has reached “nearly every country in the world” states Twitter. In a New York Times article, Noam Cohen reports that in January 2009, there were a recorded 2.4 Million Tweets per day. Just 9 months later, that number rose to 26 Million in October of 2009.

However, whether you’ve decided to add Twitter as a daily integration to your list of to do’s or have turned a cheek to the excessive idea of virtual omnipresence, one prominent fact remains; Twitter is here to stay…at least for a while. In late 2009, the term “tweeting” or to “tweet”, was ceremoniously inducted into the Associated Press as a legitimate verb. So given its abundant popularity and cross- cultural coverage, the only question remaining is, “What’s happening?”

For more information on how to build a more successful Twitter following and gain more customer exposure, Visit the Open Forum discussion page at American Express.com.