2Why Is Twitter So Powerful?

Twitter isn't unique.

Yes, it's big and it's got buzz that other sites just don't have.

It's growing at the kind of phenomenal rate that's already forced the social media giants to look over their shoulders and copy some of its best innovations.

Twitter's not the only service that allows people to broadcast short messages. We've already seen that plenty of other sites offer the same service in one form or another, including esoteric services, such as Snapchat.

The difference is that Twitter is by far the most powerful microblogging service available, and it's the one that marketers absolutely need to be including in their online marketing campaigns, large or small.

Twitter and Its Successes

We've mentioned that at its simplest Twitter is just a means to send short updates to people who want to receive them.

The most basic way to do that is to log in to your Twitter account on the Web and type your tweet into the text field. Anyone who looks at your profile can see all of your outgoing tweets. (See Figure 2.1.)

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Figure 2.1 Twitter's new home pages put a big emphasis on search. Your Twitter home page will look a little different.

Followers can also see a list of tweets from everyone they follow when they log in to their Twitter home page. They'll also see tweets sent from people they follow to other people they follow, allowing them to jump into conversations ...

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