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Can you believe it was just 5 years ago that Twitter began? What was once just a way to keep friends easily connected with real time updates like “Where you at?”, Twitter is now a tremendous tool for the business that knows how to use it properly.

Used for Branding, Customer Service, Coupon Specials, making joint venture partnerships, online networking, search engine optimization, driving traffic to your blog or web site, and more… Twitter is an online marketers dream. With keyword search, you can find someone talking about your product, service, or Brand, real time and reply back to them (whether they are following you or not.)

I caught Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter (find him @biz on Twitter), on Conan O’Brien’s Show last week. With the Tonight Show debacle and Conan being restricted on when he could appear in public and what he could say last year, he said Twitter was his saving grace. Visit @teamcoco to read his witty tweets.

Brian Solis blogged that Twitter, “has a reported 200+ million users (and bots) and a market valuation of $8 – $10 billion. It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to hit 1 billion Tweets. Now it only takes 1 week for Twitter to syndicate 1 billion Tweets.” If you are actively using Twitter, you understand how it works and can really see the power of it to connect instantly with someone you know, or have a common interest with. Even the mobile use of Twitter has grown 182% in the last year.

If you visit Twitter’s home page these days, their tag line reads, “The Best Way to Discover What’s New in Your World.” For the general user, you can find out what Oprah has to say, or stay up to date on the latest happenings of your favorite music artist or celebrity.

In January there was a lot of talk about how Twitter helped the people of Tunisia stay connected and avoid censorship by their government using the hashtag #sidibouzid.

Twitter is a lot of things to a lot of different users. For social media experts, having a networking tool available at your fingertips that can reach anyone (who has a Twitter account), anywhere, in any country, in seconds is phenomenal. As long as you have a business strategy in place regarding what you are saying and when, you should be seeing success with this aspect of “permission marketing”. If after reading this you thought to yourself, “I’m supposed to have a Twitter strategy for my business account”, then, you might want to give me a call.

Twitter itself reports that 460,000 new accounts were created each day on average in February 2011. Did one of those accounts belong to you or your business? Have you found connections that are a great source of referral? Are you tracking clicks and offer codes from Twitter? What do you use Twitter for? I welcome your comments.

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