This may sound odd coming from someone like myself working in the IT industry developing websites; specifically, as some of my clients will be keen to point out, that I am usually the one advising my clients that they need to get themselves involved in Social Networking! However I just don't get Twitter and the amount of support and respect the social networking giant garners as a medium for communication in the public and the media.

As some of you may expect as a 25 year old who grew up during the Social Networking boom and that spends most of his spare time "playing around" in a band touring up and down the country, social networking is something I am fairly experienced in, have dealt with on many levels and I fully believe in. I understand and promote the importance of it as a tool and I'm even partial to the occassional pointless updates of "Had a good day today" or "[INSERT YOUR SONG TITLE HERE]". Indeed I was involved for some time in helping a small community website which united the musicians and bands in my area until it's owners decided to end it a few years ago, however I just don't see the appeal of Twitter when you can say so much more in general and say what you mean via a blog or even a status update on Facebook and the many other Social Networking mediums that provide more than just 140 characters.

So strong has the pull of twitter become that Widescope itself actually develops personalised apps that pull information from your twitter account and puts them on your website and I dare say we were doing it well before it was even widely available from other designers, although that may be due to Steve's adherence to the words of Stephen Fry!!

Still I just don't get it.

Granted it is put together very well, but it is such a clumsy way of communication and a basic repetition of an idea that has been a bit part in so many other social networking websites and tools that you end up having to connect numerous accounts together in order to keep them all up to date (one for photos, twitter, one for news, etc). Fair enough if you could do anything else other than 140 characters of broken English and "trending" but you can't. Granted simplicity is often the best way to go, but Twitter takes that ethos to a whole new level that the English Language is sacrificed just to get your point across! And the medium causes so many problems (you'll know what I mean if you're a Newcastle United fan!!) that it hardly seems worth doing.

However as it is, a Twitter account is of the utmost importance as a tool for any online business or profile as the links and pull it generates alone is a major bonus. It helps bring you so much closer to your "followers", allows you to talk to them on an almost real time basis and allows "safe" interaction in comparison to a chat room. Perhaps I'm just greedy but I expect much more than what you get, however it's power over the people can not be denied nor under estimated, check out a few of the figures below if you think that you or your company doesn't need a Twitter account:

1. On Saturday night (27th of August 2011) 8,868 tweets per second were recorded when Beyonce announced her pregnancy during the MTV Video Music Awards.
2. The previous record was held by the Women's World Cup final in july where 7,196 tweets per second were recorded for Japan's win over the USA
3. After Brazil's defeat to Paraguay in the Copa America 7,166 tweets per second were registered by the social networking giants after the match.
4. On January 1st 2011 as the New Year arrived in Tokyo 6,939 tweets were counted per second on Twitter's website.

All of these break even the recorded tweets for what you'd expect to be the highest such as the 5,000 tweets per second when the death of Osama Bin Laden was announced in May or the 5,530 tweets per second during and after the 11th March earthquake and subsequent tsunami which devestated Japan or even the 3,966 tweets per second for the Royal Wedding in April.

These figures alone, specifically the ones that are in regards to somewhat trivial events (in comparison to terrorism, natural disasters, etc) prove that Twitter is an important medium and tool that any company needs to get onto to help spread their public image. Think of it as having the opportunity to get a free business premises in a busy city centre and instead paying to open up shop in a village out of town. You just wouldn't do that, so why not open a free account on twitter and update it regularly to potential of millions if not billions using Twitter every day?

Of course it is an ideal medium for the fast spread of news for the media with short concise burst akin to a news update on Sky News or ITN News, however it's initial draw as a "microblogging" website seems a bit bizarre to me. Why did people originally go to it? Why is it that people seem so sick of Facebook now and yet no one really voices discontent towards Twitter?

Regardless of what I say however, we all still need a Twitter account.

If you're interested in getting started with Social Networking or would like help setting one up on your website, please do feel free to contact us.