Twitter was launched in July of 2006 but exploded into the mainstream in
March of 2007 at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas when Twitter
showcased their company to music goers and showed them how they could
Tweet to their friends about the great music they were hearing.Twitter
grew as a form of social media but many did not see the business
potential in "a bunch of kids talking about what they were doing and what
that girl was wearing."Perceptive marketers saw the potential. What if
you could find out what Tweeters were looking for, what they were telling
their friends they liked, where they were going? You could create a
promotion targeting those Tweeters.Twitter, like the iPhone and iPad have
benefited from the brains of their users as much or more than the brains
of their employees. Outside developers created applications (apps) that
use the power of Twitter to do things the official developers had never
thought about.Some apps were meant for fun; silly little games that took
you out of the stressful world surrounding the users. Some apps were
developed to harness and analyze Tweets and use that data to create
promotions directed at the Twitter users.Twitter is a powerful force in
social media. Twitter users are interconnected in a similar fashion to
friends on Facebook. Twitter users can "follow" other interesting users
and in turn be "followed" themselves.Twitter can be set to allow the
users geolocation to be shown and this is a big breakthrough for
business. A business can now target users within a certain geographical
radius that might become loyal customers.Some applications allow the
gathering of keywords. A business owner might set the application to
monitor keywords that are related to the business. Say the business is a
restaurant. The restaurant owner could set the app to capture all tweets
that include the words "hungry, starving, lunch, eat" or any other
related words.Now let's combine the geographical data and the keyword
data. This combination would allow the business owners to see which
Twitter users within say 5 miles of the restaurant are Tweeting that they
are hungry and looking for somewhere to eat lunch.Twitter does not allow
mass tweets to users that are not followers but the restauranteur could
reply to the tweeters inviting them to come for lunch. The restaurant
owner could even offer a discount if the customer mentions they received
the tweet.So, you can see that there are applications that help local
business owners grow their businesses by harnessing the power of Twitter.