Twitter is the ultimate micro blogging tool for social networking. With Twitter, you can connect with people in your industry and build opportunities that will determine your success. From its start as a side project in March, 2006 located in San Francisco, CA, Twitter’s goal has always been to allow a user to update their status, in 140 characters or less. Twitter got its humble beginning when Jack Dorsey wanted to be able to see what his friends were currently up to.

On a more technical side of things, Twitter is powered by Ruby on Rails which allows the team to quickly change, test, and deploy new features into their ever growing site.

On the note of ever growing, according to Alexa.com, Twitter is the 79th most trafficked site (till to date) on the Internet with an almost vertical growth in terms of reach. Alexa currently estimates that Twitter reaches 1.37% of all Internet users and it is constantly growing.

With a site as large as Twitter, you’d think that they’d be making tons of money from their business, right? In fact, they’re spending more money than they’re making. Twitter has a business model that is still in research, but when implemented will be extremely successful pulling in tons of revenue.

Twitter’s main focus though is to keep things simple. You use twitter by logging in to your account then typing in a message less than or equal to 140 characters which is your status. The main idea though, is that with Twitter, you follow other users’ updates and other users follow your updates. If you’re interested more on the history of Twitter, I’d recommend that you click here. If you’d like to understand how Twitter works from a video stand point, you need to watch the following useful video in this regard.

Twitter was designed using Omnigraffle and Photoshop to allow a very flexible range of opportunities. It focuses on a simple two column design with all of its features (which include direct messaging, replying, and status updating) right there in front of you for easy access.

The main objective of Twitter is to be able to see what other users are doing at a moment’s notice. As far as design goes though, Twitter allows its users to customize their homepage with custom backgrounds which are used on their profile as well. Twitter.com though isn’t the only place you’ll find features. Twitter has their own API which allows developers to have services based around Twitter which expand so much on what you can do with your Twitter profile.

With such a huge success on so many levels, many people have been finding Twitter to be rather effective with marketing. Twitter helps to market your business in several ways. One of these ways is that it allows users to connect and build relationships which can lead to sales. Another way is that once you build up your following of Twitter users, you can easily just Tweet an update about your new product or service and almost instantly have users running to your website to see what’s going on.

Users are genuinely interested in knowing what your business or brand is coming up with next and by utilizing Twitter to establish a following of customers or potential customers, you can build relationships on a personal level with your customers that can lead to potential business opportunities which can lead to profit.

Another wonderful feature that you need to be utilizing on Twitter if you’re using it for your business or brand is the “Twitter Search“. The search function allows you to search the “public timeline” which is basically all the updates from all the Twitter users in a simple design. By searching for keywords such as “hiring developer”, you can find potential jobs or even work.

On the note of Twitter mash ups again, I’d like to take a moment and tell you about the best ones. One of the most widely used Twitter mash ups is TwitPic.com which allows the user to post a picture from a mobile phone or computer and have TwitPic update your status with the caption and link to the photo. Another interesting Twitter mash up is “TwitterVision” which allows the user to see Tweets from around the world in a Google Earth style setting. Some other very cool things that you need to take part in are desktop clients such as TweetDeck which allow you to view your public timeline side by side to your replies and direct messages.

All in all, I love Twitter and I think you will to. If you’re not already using it, you need to be a part of it today and start connecting with other users to build relationships or even your business.

Happy Tweeting!