Twitter - Not A Bad Six Years!
Posted in Social Media & Reputation Management by Susie Hood on 24th of March, 2012
Twitter turned six years old this week. From the very first tweet (or would that be twtt?) back in March 2006, by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey (@jack), to the incredible stat of 140 million current active users and around 340 million tweets a day, there is no denying that Twitter has proven to be a remarkable success and has
captured the imagination of more than one generation of users. Whether you use Twitter to simply peek at the lives of the rich/famous/funny, use it as your own personal news station (I know I do), use it to spread information about your own personal adventures, use it as part of your business to connect with customers, or a
combination of all the above, then those 140 characters can fit the bill. 
Twitter has been in the news more than ever over the last couple of years in the UK. With a mixture of blame and praise for playing a role during the UK riots last summer, the breaking of super-injunctions, the legalities surrounding what is said in tweets and keeping people up to date with news events across the world,
Twitter is now a real source of discussion in political, legal, social and business circles. If your company doesn't have an active Twitter account with someone monitoring, engaging and contributing regularly, then you could be missing out on a whole world of repeat and new business. It's a reciprocal thing. You have to be
tweeting usefully/creatively in order to gain respect and for people to take notice. Don't be afraid to show some personality and please, please, please don't just self-promote or only retweet compliments. However you use it, Twitter has become a real giant of the online world, and personally, I would put most of that down to
it's simplicity. It is incredibly easy to use on the go - with Twitter recently reporting that around 55% of users were tweeting from mobile devices. If I want to know what is on TV currently, I can usually tell by what is trending on Twitter in the UK without even having to switch on my TV set. If anything big news-wise has
happened overnight, usually the first place I find out about it is on Twitter when I check my timeline on my smartphone before I even get out of bed. I heard about the death of Bin Laden on Twitter, from Everton FC footballer Phil Neville of all people! Whilst there are negatives to Twitter too - the spam, the hacked accounts,
the trolls etc, the positives outweigh them for me. It will be interesting to see what the next six years of Twitter have in store!
Twitter has been in the news more than ever over the last couple of years in the UK. With a mixture of blame and praise for playing a role during the UK riots last summer, the breaking of super-injunctions, the legalities surrounding what is said in tweets and keeping people up to date with news events across the world,
Twitter is now a real source of discussion in political, legal, social and business circles. If your company doesn't have an active Twitter account with someone monitoring, engaging and contributing regularly, then you could be missing out on a whole world of repeat and new business. It's a reciprocal thing. You have to be
tweeting usefully/creatively in order to gain respect and for people to take notice. Don't be afraid to show some personality and please, please, please don't just self-promote or only retweet compliments. However you use it, Twitter has become a real giant of the online world, and personally, I would put most of that down to
it's simplicity. It is incredibly easy to use on the go - with Twitter recently reporting that around 55% of users were tweeting from mobile devices. If I want to know what is on TV currently, I can usually tell by what is trending on Twitter in the UK without even having to switch on my TV set. If anything big news-wise has
happened overnight, usually the first place I find out about it is on Twitter when I check my timeline on my smartphone before I even get out of bed. I heard about the death of Bin Laden on Twitter, from Everton FC footballer Phil Neville of all people! Whilst there are negatives to Twitter too - the spam, the hacked accounts,
the trolls etc, the positives outweigh them for me. It will be interesting to see what the next six years of Twitter have in store!