Here is a fresh and inisghtful look at the impact and possible business uses of Twitter:
Micro-blogging platform Twitter has 32 million users, which is an increase from about 2 million a year ago, according to research mentioned in The Wall Street Journal. Some Internet measurement services show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month-over-month. While it is not clear that Twitter will become as large as social networks, MySpace and Facebook or video-sharing site YouTube, the company could certainly have 50 million visitors by the end of the year.
Because Twitter can be used with ease on both PCs and mobile devices and because it limits users to very short messages of 140 characters or less, it has become one of the largest platforms in the world for sharing real-time data. A number of large businesses and celebrities have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. This includes personalities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. JetBlue (JBLU), Whole Foods (WFMI), and Dell (DELL), along with other multinational corporations, are also among the most followed names on the service.