Some­one sent me an email ask­ing me what the pur­pose of Twit­ter was. Is it prac­ti­cal? Is it a fad? The own­ers haven’t even mon­e­tized it. It’s a great ques­tion and there are a lot of peo­ple ask­ing it. I believe the best way to answer it is that it’s true pur­pose has yet to be rec­og­nized. I remem­ber telling a friend years ago that he should buy a per­sonal com­puter. He couldn’t see a rea­son to spend the money. He didn’t know what to do with it. He finally got one, of course, and now spends too much time on it. He found many uses for it after he bought it. Like a per­sonal com­puter, per­haps Twit­ter has to be used to help you see its value.

Some peo­ple use Twit­ter to call atten­tion to updates to their blog or site. It’s like send­ing a mes­sage to every client at once. Some com­pa­nies use it to tell every­one what their up to.  Many give away prizes to ran­dom cus­tomers  in a hope that they will stay tuned. Some sim­ply use it as a microblog that imme­di­ately updates it’s fol­low­ers. Imag­ine your­self cre­at­ing a text mes­sage from you cell phone that goes out to mil­lions of inter­ested read­ers. These are just some of it’s uses. Are you cre­ative enough to find another?

As far as Twit­ter being mon­e­tized, well there is some work that needs to be done there. Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twit­ter, on a recent inter­view with Tavis Smi­ley says that Twit­ter will remain free to all but there are some spe­cial new ser­vices that may have value to par­tic­u­lar users. Those pre­mium ser­vices will help bring rev­enue to the company.

In my opin­ion, the true pur­pose of twit­ter has yet to be rec­og­nized or dis­cov­ered. Maybe it has a lot of lit­tle pur­poses. It has many cre­ative per­sonal uses. As a busi­ness owner or mar­ket­ing man­ager you really have to look at how Twit­ter can sup­port your busi­ness plan. What value can it bring your com­pany? You’ll have to judge for your­self. Start by doing some research. Check out these rea­sons why some peo­ple thing Twit­ter has amaz­ing value. Here are a few oth­ers. Feel free to share your expe­ri­ences here. As I find out more, I will do the same.

Tags: Online Services, twitter