Twitter is suddenly more all over the news than usual. So what’s all buzz?

Turns out, lot’s of things.

First, let’s start with the big event: today was the first day of Twitter’s inaugural developers’ conference called Chirp. This is a gathering of just under 100 geeks at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts who build applications that rely on Twitter feeds (or APIs) to provide a Twitter-related service to end-users (that would be you and me.) Company co-Founder and CEO, Evan Williams said that developers using the Twitter API make about three billion calls a day into the service.

These applications make it easier for individuals and businesses to, for instance, send tweets from their desktops or mobile devices across multiple accounts (Seesmic or TweetDeck), or to send pictures via Twitter (TwitPic), or to analyze how well you or your brand is doing in the Twitterverse.

Second, a bunch of numbers were announced today. Company co-Founder Biz Stone said Twitter now has nearly 106 million registered users and adds about 300,000 new users per day worldwide. So, that’s a lot. What’s really notable is that about 75 percent of Twitter’s traffic is from outside Twitter.com – that is, all those applications I mentioned above are driving the lion’s share of tweets that are broadcast around the world every day. The other big number is that Twitter handles about 19 billion search queries per month either on its own site or via the API – which makes them second only to Google in total search queries per month.

That takes us to the third thing: revenue. Since it broadcast its first tweet in March, 2006 everyone has wondered one thing: how will Twitter make money? Four years later, they’ve got an answer. Promoted Tweets.

According to Twitter COO, Dick Costolo, Promoted Tweets will be a system whereby businesses can bid to promote their own tweets into top-of-stream conversations around particular topics. For instance, say you’re Paramount Pictures and you’re promoting a new movie with opening night parties in cities around the U.S. So you blast out tweets saying “Find an opening night party at a theater near you.” Today, you send that tweet out and it quickly becomes buried under all the tweets that follow it. With Promoted Tweets, each time someone includes your keyword – say, the movie’s title, or the name of its principal star – your tweet will quickly follow-on that tweet to the same group of followers. If Paramount’s tweet gets re-tweeted, clicked-on or favorited, such actions will somehow accrue to the benefit of the advertiser (it isn’t exactly clear how, but I’m guessing its akin to Google’s performance-based quality score for ads in its AdWords system).

“All that exist in our monetization platform are tweets,” Costolo said. “Everything is a tweet. A Promoted Tweet is a tweet. You can do anything to a Promoted Tweet that you can do to a regular tweet.”

Pretty cool. Especially for those of us in the advertising and marketing world looking for ways to appropriately engage in the twitterverse without looking pushy or like we’re trying to interrupt something. Bidding on search keywords became Google’s cash cow; it’s clear Twitter is hoping that bidding on keywords in tweets could become a big cash generator for them.

Speaking of money, the fourth big thing is that Twitter is now developing features and functions within its own sphere that will compete directly with some of the applications built by the very third-party developers Twitter is hosting this week at Chirp. As you might imagine, this is profoundly anxiety-producing for start-ups who’ve built their whole business model around the Twitter API and features that heretofore were absent from the core Twitter offering. So there are more than a few geeks sweating over this. Still, Twitter’s new monetization scheme is something they’re willing to share with Twitter developers who build Promoted Tweets into their applications – in fact, they’ve proposed a generous 50 / 50 split for advertising revenue. So, bad news and good news for developers.

But why, you may ask, should I care about the whole Twitter phenomenon at all? Isn’t it just another fad??

Well, in the same way that blogging seemed to come out of nowhere and then radically altered the ways in which people acquire and consume news, entertainment and information, Twitter is altering the realm of casual conversation. Its created a global water cooler and, from time-to-time, an outlet for breaking citizen-reported news. Remember that immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the first accounts out of the country were via tweets and TwitPics. The same has been true for countless other natural and man-made disasters over the last four years.

Many also believe that Twitter played an outsized role in the extraordinary campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2008. And because Twitter updates now flow seamlessly into Facebook updates, which is also enjoying phenomenal growth among all age segments, more and more people around the world rely on Twitter – whether they know it or not – for their just-in-time / just-enough news, gossip and daily life updates.

Which leads to the last big announcements relating to Twitter this week:

• Google announced that it will make the entire Twitter archive available via its search engine in the coming weeks.
• Microsoft’s Bing announced that it will now elevate relevant tweets in its search results based on real-time trending data.
• Google has also announced that it is incorporating Twitter’s “@anywhere” API, which Twitter announced last month and which makes it easier for third-party websites to incorporate Twitter functionality, into Google’s new service Follow Finder. Just enter your Twitter handle and Follow Finder will recommend other Twitter members who are not yet in your “following” list.
• The U.S. Library of Congress will now officially archive the entire Twitter archive dating back to its opening day in March 2006. Now anything you may have tweeted during that time – and I mean anything – is now resident in the august chambers of our nation’s most prestigious library. Horrifying, no?

Twitter’s impact on the social and cultural landscape worldwide is, presently, incalculable, and its clear the young company isn’t content to rest on its laurels. These changes, together with the exciting new apps still yet to emerge from its ecosystem of developers, portends more exciting announcements to come.

Tweets from users on Twitter have hit the big-time: they’re now going to be featured in search results on Bing and Google.

For those geeks among you who follow news from places like Twitter, Google and Microsoft (maker of Bing) like I do (it’s not a particularly scintillating life I lead…), you were no doubt enthralled with yesterday’s unfolding events.

First there was this blog post by Biz Stone, Twitter’s chief:

…there are already tens of thousands of Twitter apps and more to come because people want the choice to consume and create tweets wherever and whenever they prefer. The folks over at Bing took a keen interest in Twitter and worked fast to establish a working relationship with us in line with our open approach.

Twitter is providing Bing access to the overwhelming deluge of public, real-time tweets rushing in from all around the world so they can help you find those that make the most sense right now. While Twitter currently presents tweets based simply on timeliness, Bing is experimenting with new solutions such as “best match.” We hope more working relationships with organizations in the search business will mean even more variety for users.

Which, of course, was a not-so-coy reference to Google (OMG!) Sure enough, the ever-present and elegant Marissa Mayer, Google’s chief guru around all things search, sent a tweet (”Google and Twitter!! Yay!! http://bit.ly/183svN“) announcing they, too would integrate tweets from Twitter. From her blog post:

…we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

Here’s Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president at Microsoft, previewing Twitter integration with Bing search results at this week’s Web 2.0 Summit here in San Francisco:

This is great for users because Twitter is often the place to get first-person, “on-the-ground” reports of breaking news or leaking information. By seeing real-time results of tweets from Twitter relating to any given topics in context with other information, particularly reports researched, verified and edited by professional journalists, can be a powerful way to stay informed. It’s also a great way to forensically understand how it is events unfold because there are so many points of view on the event.

It’s great, too for advertisers on Google and Bing who bid on search keywords. Because there is a finite amount of search inventory for the vast majority of keywords, any opportunity to increase the volume of searches overall creates more opportunities for advertisers to insert relevant messages when and where audiences are expressing a related interest. The challenge for advertisers, of course, is keeping track of rising and falling memes (or topics) in order to place timely bids on keywords or phrases relating to those topics or issues that are suddenly on the rise. Still, it’s an opportunity.

Set Up Your Account On Twitter Wisely. When you first set up your account, be sure to pick a user name that is easily / readily associated with your business.  At Yield Software we use “YieldSW” on Twitter and everywhere else.  If your business is named Kathy’s Kupcakes, choose “kathyskupcakes” as your user name.  (Hopefully that’s not a real business! If it is, I swear that was a random choice.)

Remember this formula: Followers = Social Capital; Social Capital = Success. You can begin to build followers by first uploading your address book to Twitter to discover who is already on Twitter.  Follow all those people.  They will get an email saying you’re now following them and will be given the opportunity to follow you in return.  Put a “follow me on Twitter” button on your Website, blog, email auto-signature and business cards.  You can also see who’s following Yield Software on twitter.com/YieldSW or any other account you follow, and then choose to follow some or all of those folks.  They, in turn, may follow you.  Finally, you can go to sites like whoshouldifollow.com and summize.com to see recommendations about others you might like to follow.  The more people following you the greater the opportunity for you to intersect with folks who will find benefit from your business.  So get out there and start raising some social capital!

Get Organized and Be Efficient. There are a number of things you can do and tools you can leverage to make your tweeting enterprise more productive.  First, when you sign up for Twitter be sure to enable the mobile phone feature so you can send updates to Twitter via SMS text message. If you have an iPhone, download one of a number of great Twitter apps (I use Tweetie). If you manage more than one Twitter account (i.e., one for personal use and one for professional purposes) you can manage these efficiently from you desktop using the Hootsuite.com web application; the Seesmic desktop app also enables you to track multiple accounts.  If you’re managing just one account, use TweetDeck or Seesmic, which are both cool desktop applications (built in Adobe Air), to not only keep track of the folks you follow in real time, but to add your own updates; set up saved searches for topics you care most about; monitor tweets from or about your key competition; and to search for or follow folks who are new to you. (Links to helpful services can be found at the end of this post.)

Synch Twitter with Other Social Networks. Using FriendFeed, you can manage all the content for your social Web subscriptions in one place.  Using the simple interface, you can add your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Yelp and many other accounts to keep them all coordinated.  Then, when you add a new tweet to your Twitter stream, your Facebook update, for instance, will be automatically populated with the same message, thus enabling you to keep your followers up to date no matter where it is they typically find you. (The Tweetie app on my iPhone automatically updates both Twitter and my Facebook news feed; increasingly, these sorts of cross-platform update features are being built into social and other Web environments.)

Never, Ever Forget Twitter is a Broadcast Medium. Once you’ve hit the “enter” key, it’s out there.  Forever.  And can’t be taken back.  So don’t take tweeting for business purposes too lightly.  Tweeting when angry or with a few cocktails under your belt can have terrible consequences for your business relationships.  When sending a tweet, always – ALWAYS – double check your message before hitting “send”.  The best rule of thumb is to be respectful at all times.  You can still be charming or funny or ironic or serious – but don’t send a tweet you wouldn’t be comfortable using in a conversation with one of your customers.

Tweet Often, But Not Too Often. Folks follow you because you regularly tweet about things they find useful or interesting or entertaining.  By grabbing a spare moment here or there to blast out a tweet via text message, for instance, you’re reminding folks that you – AND your business – are open, available and ready to engage.  Each and every tweet need not be substantive, but neither should every one of your tweets be completely silly.  A good friend and serial entrepreneur, Dave Sifry, has a simple personal motto that he lives by, which is “be of service.”  I keep this motto in mind every time I tweet (though I do slip in quite a few “lifecast” tweets about my lunch, my dog or the weather, which I hope provides the service of levity from time-to-time!)

Folks who begin using Twitter for the first time almost immediately discover there is a vocabulary in use throughout the “twitterverse” that can, at first, feel confusing.  Over time, you’ll begin to see the logic of it all and will incorporate this vocabulary into your own without really realizing it.  To get you started, here’s a few translations for you:

Twitter: The proper name of the social networking phenomenon, officially known as “micro-blogging”, which enables people to update their followers with posts of no more than 140 characters.

Tweet: A posting of no more than 140 characters to one’s followers on Twitter.

Twitterverse: The total universe of people actively using Twitter.

Twitterati: The most engaged users of Twitter; the folks who are avid users and understand the rules, conventions and social mores of the twitterverse.

Lifecasting: The practice of tweeting about every little thing you do, think, see or experience throughout your day. Some do this very, very well and the tweets are compelling and entertaining. Lifecasting is a particular talent, however, and I recommend following those who are good at it for a while before attempting this yourself.

Auto-DM: A much-hated, much-derided, but still over-used way of automatically responding (literally “automatic direct message”) to someone who follows you with a canned response. For instance, say I just followed you and a moment later I get this automatic direct-response tweet from you: “Thanks for following! Check out my website at www.iamsodarnirritating.com!!”  Everyone hates these and the twitterati looks down their collective nose at those who use auto-DM to tweet.

The “@” Symbol.  This is important. When addressing or referring to another in the twitterverse you do it by using their user name or handle (for Yield Software it’s “YieldSW”).  So, instead of tweeting “I love Yield Software!”, you’d tweet “I love @YieldSW!” (and we love you, too.)

The “D” Convention. When you want to send a direct message to someone on Twitter, but don’t want the whole Twitterverse to see it, add a “D” at the beginning of your tweet, followed by a space and the user name of the person you’re addressing on Twitter. (In Twitter, Seesmic, TweetDeck, HootSuite, Tweetie and other Twitter apps there are buttons that enable direct repsonses.) So, to tell Yield Software you need help with setting up multivariate testing of a landing page you’d send this tweet: “D YieldSW I need some help setting up multivariate testing.” Remember: in order to direct-message someone, you must be following them AND they must be following you.

The “RT” Convention. When you see a tweet that you like or feel would be informative to all those following you, you can “retweet” that post.  Everyone following you will see the retweet and the person who originally wrote the post will see that you retweeted it, which promotes a lot of good will among the twitterati. Most Twitter apps have a retweet button to make this easy and efficient. Or you can copy a tweet, paste it into the message box and put “RT” and the “@username” of the original poster in front, and hit the post button. So, say I just sent out a tweet from @YieldSW that you see in your Twitter feed as: “YieldSW Our customers totally rock.”  You could retweet this by copying and pasting this tweet into the message box on Twitter and typing “RT @” in front of “YieldSW” (there’s no space between “@” and “YieldSW”.)

The “#” Convention.  The hash symbol (”#”) is a way to add tags to your tweets.  Tags provide context or identifying information that enables more efficient searches across the twitterverse. (Think of the dogtags folks in the military wear around the their necks, which provide identifying information about a service member should they become injured.) For instance: you might tweet “Yield’s Web Marketing Suite has improved the ROI on my PPC campaigns. #SEM”  This means that your tweet refers to the Search Engine Marketing profession. When someone does a search on Twitter to see recent tweets about Search Engine Marketing or SEM, the #SEM tag helps the engine capture your tweet in the search results.  Folks also use it around specific events. When the popular South-by-Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas was in full swing, thousands of people were blasting hundreds of thousands of tweets either beginning or ending with the tag #SXSW.  Still others will use the hash tag as a way of communicating context. For instance: “I just got a new puppy. #happy”

A Summary of Useful Links

www.twitter.com

www.friendfeed.com

www.tweetdeck.com

www.seesmic.com

www.hootsuite.com

www.tweetvolume.com

Tweetie for iPhone

For more blog posts in this series, go here.

On first blush, Twitter can look and feel like a complete waste of time.  Essentially you get 140 characters to say something to all the people who follow you.  And any cursory review of these updates – called tweets – will reveal many, many people who “lifecast”; that is, people use their 140 characters to give an update on what they’re doing or thinking or seeing in any given moment in time such as eating lunch or getting ready to board a plane.

So why would you want your business on a service that has a whole lot of people tweeting about the joys of a grilled cheese sandwich?  Because a deeper view into Twitter will reveal that the number of people using their 140 characters for more serious and helpful purposes are growing in number every day.  Choosing to be one among these more substantive tweeters (even if you occasionally give in to the gratuitous lifecast tweet about your cat, lunch or child’s school play) can have very positive benefits to your small or growing business.

At Yield Software, we use Twitter (you can follow us at /yieldsw) and many of my co-workers and I tweet using personal accounts (you can follow ME at /djg2theworld).  Building a community on Twitter is a really powerful way to stay connected; to build interesting networks of stakeholders and allies; and to keep all those interested in your work updated on what’s new, different, changing or not functioning quite right.

What follows is a list of benefits to using Twitter for your small or growing business after which I’ve included a number of tools that might be helpful to you as you begin to tweet for yourself.

1. Market Research and Customer Service: Monitor what people are saying about you, your company, and your product.  Using one of a number of tools (listed below), keep tabs on the conversation about those topics you care about most.  Where there’s an opportunity to respond (to questions, to criticism, to praise) you should do that immediately.  Where you discover market intelligence, incorporate that into your business strategies.  And where you see trends emerging (or falling flat on their faces), make note of it and figure out if getting out in front of something emergent might be the right strategic move for your business.

2. Networking: Increasingly, our personal and professional networks make all the difference in terms of maintaining an edge in business.  Foster large and thriving networks via Twitter and other social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.  Each time you make a new business contact – whether a customer, a business partner, or a new vendor – be sure to add them to your online social universe by following or “friending” them.  If new contacts don’t include their Twitter handle, LinkedIn profile and the like in their email signature or business card, ask them for that information and invite them to follow or friend you. Most social platforms also have a great search system. (And be sure your auto-signature in email includes links to your Twitter profile, as well as others.)  Each new contact is a portal into a whole new universe of potential contacts.

3. Competitive Research: Again, using one of several tools available to you, regularly monitor your competition on Twitter.  To the extent you see new initiatives or missteps on the part of your competition, use that information to keep your edge and win in your space.  If your competition isn’t actively tweeting on Twitter, make sure you set up a saved search in one of the tools listed below so you can see when someone in the “Twitterverse” is talking about your competitors.  You can gain real actionable intelligence by being a smart and active listener on Twitter – and chances are, your competition is keeping track of you, too, so don’t let yourself be at a strategic disadvantage.

4.  Get Answers: Often, people are afraid of asking questions in public forums for fear of looking or sounding stupid.  It’s time to get over that fear!  Twitter has emerged as a wonderful place to seek answers for all kinds of questions.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen business owners or leaders inside corporations put an open-ended question out there (including ones where I thought “gosh… everyone knows that!”) only to see them receive an abundance of thoughtful responses from all sorts of people just trying to be helpful.  It’s frankly heart-warming to see.  So don’t be afraid to put questions out there.  But be genuine about it: don’t play games with folks by asking bogus questions designed to drive a promotion.  By being genuine and open, you’ll see people respond in kind.  And that could help you and your business in ways you can’t even imagine.

5. Give Answers: The corollary to number 4 above is that because so many people put questions out there, you have an opportunity to respond with answers where you have something helpful to say.  Seize every opportunity to be helpful on Twitter.  Besides the good karma, people may just “re-tweet” your response to their own networks, which may prompt folks you’ve never interacted with before to follow you, thus building your network.

6. Make Offers: People on Twitter love a deal.  (But then I guess that’s true everywhere!)  If you have a credible deal to offer to folks on Twitter, put it out there.  Make sure you put a link into your tweet announcing the deal and that the landing page for the link speaks to the Twitterverse specifically with an immediate action.  Discounts are good.  Free is better!  Come up with something really compelling; you’ll be surprised just how fast your offer spreads around the world!

There’s no denying the growing ubiquity of Twitter. By using this emerging medium intelligently and in a way that adheres to the social standards of the Twitterverse, you can make real progress against your business marketing goals.

A Summary of Useful Links

www.twitter.com
www.friendfeed.com
www.tweetdeck.com
www.seesmic.com
www.hootsuite.com
www.tweetvolume.com

For more blog posts in this series, including “Basic Twitter Etiquette“, go here.