The Rise of Twitter: Do you know what it is?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro blogging platform which allows users to publish short messages or send “tweets” up to 140 characters to the Twitter website. This can be done through various mediums; i.e., cellular phone; instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.

Twitter’s traffic comes from SMS, Instant Message, MobileWeb, and all those wonderful API projects out there. However, there is also good old fashioned web traffic. 60% of web traffic comes from outside the United States. This chart is indicating the top ten US sources.

Says, DJ Chuang,

“Twitter is really handy because you can update it so many ways: IM (instant messaging), SMS (text msg from a cell phone), email, web browser, mobile browser, 3rd party software, and even voice (via a phone call to jott.com). And, you can “follow” someone’s twitter feed (aka get notifications), there are so many ways to receive updates: email, IM, SMS text msg, RSS feed, and more.”

Twitter is and has been used on occasion to help Communities also. Nate Ritter wrote a post about how he used Twitter as a Help Center during the San Diego fires. Nate’s interview can be heard on Net Squared after speaking at Net in San Francisco.

Social Networking benefits? Alexandra Samuel posted an article about Twitter and social networking tools to track progress of the worldwide movement for social change. She asks the question, “What did you do today that moved your work, your organization, your issue or your personal practice forward? ”

I understand there is a new service out now called “Twitter +” twit is a new service that works on top of twitter that lets you twitter with pictures or video and also privately send files to your twitter friends.

No need to list instructions on how to use Twitter. You can find that by reading the Twitter FAQ. Initially, you may have to start using Twitter on occasion only, as it is my understanding that it can be a useful tool, but a time waster if it is not used as a manageable process integrating it with your work and overall lifestyle.

Nevertheless, I’ll take the risk.