When Twitter was publicly released in August 2006 there were plenty of skeptics. The idea was to give people an easy way to post very short - 140 characters or less - notes about what they were doing in their daily lives.

Postings from people saying they were about to go to lunch or board a plane seemed trivial.

But Twitter took off, launching the "microblogging" phenomenon. Twitter had 7 million visitors to its website in February 2009, a 1,382 percent increase over a year earlier, according to Nielsen Online. By March 2009, Twitter was growing at a 2,565 percent annual rate, according to Nielsen Online data.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported in a December 2008 survey that 11 percent of online adults in the U.S. had used a service like Twitter.

(although Twitter's growth will inevitably slow, and a relatively small percentage of Twitter users actively post - see the studies in the Readings and Resources section below)

People can set up accounts on Twitter for free and then post the short messages (called "tweets") to their personal pages on the Twitter website. The notes can be posted by going to the Twitter website or by sending text messages from cellphones or other mobile devices.

Others then can follow a person's postings by subscribing to them (referred to as "following" a person) on the Twitter website. The notes can be viewed on the website or by having the text notes sent to a cellphone or via email or an RSS feed. They also can be embedded in a personal blog or website.

People use Twitter to report on news events they witness or participate in:

• Iranians protesting their country's elections in June 2009 used Twitter to report on and organize demonstrations. See this New York Times story.
• A passenger on a plane that went off the runway at the Denver Airport in December 2008 used twitter to post notes about the crash and the evacuation from the plane right after they occurred.
• During the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008, some of the first reports on what was happening came on Twitter. See TechCrunch's summary on the Mumbai Twitter postings.
• A UC Berkeley journalism student used Twitter to report he had been detained by Egyptian police while covering anti-government protests there in April 2008.

Interestingly, Twitter's main demographic is not young kids, but rather middle aged, professionals in metropolitan areas.

The largest age group using Twitter was 35 - 49 years old, according to a Nielsen Online report in February 2009. And only 22 percent of 18-24 year olds use Twitter, according to a Participatory Marketing Network study. See also this article in Mashable: Stats Confirm It: Teens Don’t Tweet, and this analysis of Twitter usage data at TechCrunch: Why Don’t Teens Tweet? We Asked Over 10,000 of Them.

See also this Current TV video on Twouble with Twitters for one take on the Twitter generation gap.

News Organizations Twittering

News organizations soon picked up on Twitter, using it to post quick updates on breaking news stories or just provide a more general feed of links to news stories.

See this list of news organizations using Twitter compiled in February 2008, and another list that's more up to date. One example is the New York Times feed on Twitter of links to its news stories. Also read the postings by Knight Digital Media Center journalism fellows about how their news organizations are using Twitter.

Twitter feeds on breaking news can be a mix of postings by reporters and by citizen eye-witnesses.

• The Orange County Register used Twitter to post updates on the huge fires there in November 2008.
• That idea was inspired by an Oregonian experiment in using Twitter to aggregate tweets by people in the Portland area about heavy rain and flooding (the Oregonian uses the Monitter widget to create the feed).
• Reporters from four publications in Washington state collaborated with citizens to post updates on Twitter about flooding in western Washington in January 2009. The journalists also used the Publish2 link aggregator service to link to each others' stories and those by other news organizations.

Readings and Resources

Twittering Tips for Beginners - David Pogue column in the New York Times.

Twitter Fast Growing Beyond Its Messaging Roots - Wired Magazine story on how Twitter is being used by people to monitor home appliances and even get alerts on when a houseplant needs water.

The Twitter Explosion - American Journalism Review story on how journalists are using Twitter.

Is Twitter Really That Big - ReadWriteWeb summary of data that Purewire, a web security company, gathered on Twitter users. Among the findings: 40 percent of Twitter users haven't tweeted since the first day they created a Twitter account.

Twitter Hype Punctured by Study - BBC report on a Harvard study of Twitter users that found 10 percent of them are responsible for more than 90 percent of the postings.

Rules of Engagement for Journalists on Twitter - Mediashift story about guidelines for journalists using Twitter

MuckRack - site that aggregates Twitter postings by journalists.

‘Not a Ban, Just Guidelines’: ESPN Responds To New Twitter Policy - Mediaite interview with ESPN spokesman

ESPN.com's Rob King Discusses Guidelines For Use Of Social Media - Sports Business Daily

Who Rules the Social Web: Chicks Rule - Information is Beautiful website