17 Million Unique Reasons to Tweet

My fiancé runs a video production and web design business out of our home. Needless to say, much of his work -- video editing, site building, e-mailing, networking -- requires an Internet connection. Last year we had Internet service from [insert major cable provider here]. We had our fair share of gripes, including gaps in service, poor connection, a modem that kicked the bucket, and customer service reps with heavily accented speech -- not to mention a whopper of a bill. My fiancé finally got fed up and cancelled service, and we looked into an alternate method for connecting.

Well, as luck would have it, method No. 2 is now causing problems. Annoyed and stuck, my fiancé recently hopped on his Twitter account and posted the following: "Does anyone have a reliable and AFFORDABLE Internet provider in NH? I just can't bring myself to pay [cable provider] over $100/month again."

Not 10 minutes later, CableProviderSteve (name changed to protect the debatably innocent) tweeted in response, asking how he could help.

The moral of the story? On Twitter, people are watching. And not in a creepy, Police, "Every Breath You Take" sort of way (although I suppose that's arguable), but in a "you're a consumer; our company should pay attention to what you think and what you're saying about us" kind of way. People -- lots of people -- are on Twitter, and are paying attention. Companies and service providers are monitoring what we think about them. CableProviderSteve's job is to watch blogosphere alerts for mentions of his company, and then ask how he can help. He gets paid to tweet all day! Of course, his motivation is saving money for his big, corporate-giant company, but Twitter can be used as a force for good as well . . .

A few months ago, at the height of both the economic crash and the dead of winter, my friend Amy found herself unemployed. Amy's professional experience centered around nonprofits and event planning, but she wanted to transition into human resources. She connected with a career coach, who told her to look into Twitter. Soon Amy was connecting and tweeting with human resource professionals all over the country, asking for advice, learning inside tips, and building her professional network, 140 characters at a time. She's now a recruiter for a major Boston hospital.

People are making connections (and making money) on Twitter. According to SSI's monthly newsletter, more than half of Twitter followers reportedly use it in some marketing, professional, or work-related capacity, and they've got an audience: In April 2009, Twitter traffic jumped 83% from the month before to 17 million unique visitors. Worldwide visitors to Twitter approached 10 million in February, which is up an astonishing 700% from a year ago.

Just the fact that Peter and I are blogging about Twitter is evidence of the niche it's carved out in our tech-savvy times. Blogging about tweeting -- now that's Web 2.0 in action. Is Twitter a fad? Probably. Is it useful? Definitely. It may go the way of 8-track tapes, virtual reality, and even MySpace before long -- but in the meantime, millions are jumping on the bandwagon.

I'd like to close with an excerpt from a cleverly written blog entry by my friend Ian, who highlights the eclectic fusion of Twitter topics:

The highlight of Twitter to me is the sidebar that tells of "trending topics." These are things most Twitter-ers are talking about. Lately, the Iran election had been wailing on everything pretty soundly until Michael Jackson wanted to give St. Peter a real test. . . .

On today's listing was both of those things, but also Princess Protection Program. What is Princess Protection Program? Princess Protection Program (henceforth known as 3P) is a Disney movie where a princess from a small country that does not really exist nearly gets assassinated. She ends up moving in with some normal teenager in America. Can you say misadventures? She's not used to doing things like washing dishes, so as you can imagine, hilarity is on the menu! She also teaches her new American roomie how to do things like walk with a book on her head and which one is the salad fork. In the end, they both come out better people and the assassin goes to jail. . . .

So, let's think about the 3 things we've got on the list.

1. Extreme political instability in a country that is very much our enemy and basically hates us.

2. Death of one of the biggest music icons of all time.

3. 3P.

This is why Twitter is awesome. These three things would never come together in any other way except on a website where people belch up 140-character pieces of information the moment they come into their head and display them for the world to see. I would not have it any other way.

Would you?