Twitter was founded in March 2006 by Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone. In 2006, Williams and Biz Stone co-founded Obvious Corp along with other former Odeo employees. Twitter was created as an independent company in April 2007 by Obvious Corp. Jack Dorsey was CEO of Twitter until October 2008, when Williams became CEO and Dorsey became Chairman of the Board.
Since its inception in 2006, Twitter has become very popular around the world. Twitter is the fastest growing free microblogging software that lets you stay in touch with people through quick and frequent responses to a question: What are you doing? That little question has launched a media revolution.
“Tweet” is the term for messages of maximum 140 characters posted on Twitter. For tweeting to be effective, it must be done in a systematic way, with daily posts. For the average business owner or marketing executive, this can be very impractical due to the time required. Fortunately, technology provides ways to get things done faster.
One of those technologies is a tool called BigTweet. BigTweet is a plug-in for your web browser that allows you to post a tweet on Twitter by simply clicking the BigTweet button, located in your browser’s link menu. Highlighting a passage on a web page and clicking the button creates a tweet from the text you highlighted, as well as the page title and a short URL. If you don’t highlight any words on the page, the tweet text will only contain the page title and short URL.
Another more powerful technique is to use Tweet Later. Tweet Later is a Twitter management application that allows you to perform some critical Twitter tasks automatically. For one thing, it allows you to pre-schedule “spinning” tweets in advance. By spinnable, I mean that tweets may contain alternative words or passages that that software randomly chooses. It is a dynamic technology that allows one tweet to become the basis for numerous unique tweets. Tweet Later will also automatically follow anyone who follows you and send a personal message to all new followers.
Entrepreneurs are only now beginning to realize the power of Twitter as an online promotional tool. It seems strange and awkward at first, and it takes some time to get good at it. So don’t spin your wheels trying to figure it out. Use tools like BigTweet and Tweet Later to get more done in less time.