The only constant discussion involving Twitter has to be “What does Twitter do, really?” or “Why do people use Twitter?“. Fact is, the benefits of using Twitter are not easy to identify, if there are, in fact, any benefits at all to using it.

This is the discussion I had with Heri recently; here are 3 of the ideas we came up with;

  1. For a speaker on tour. Twitter can be used to keep his fans/friends/entourage/office posted on what’s going on during the conference. This might be very interesting in a case where up-to-the-minute info is important and there is a 2-way exchange of information up until the actual presentation.
  2. The same use can benefit someone from the office attending a trade show or conference; they can relay info back and forth to their team (assuming, of course, that the person can type, chat, and pay attention to a speaker and possibly a presentation at the same time – I myself can not do all that)
  3. Office internal; letting everyone know what you’re working on, and vice-versa. Just take a second to think about the possibilities. (No, not the possibility that everyone might think you’re not that useful after all, the good possibilities…). This is the only one I think that has value; it is certainly an idea worth exploring. A tool that does this would prove immensely useful, especially if you can chat with anyone in the company/project/community/whatever-group-you’re-a-part-of about whatever people are working on.

I find it interesting that there are probably as many people trying to figure out what it’s for as there are people actually using the service. This might be because web-aware clients are asking their PR/Marketing/web experts the same question, and these PR/Mktg/Web folks haven’t figured it out yet, which is normal. Instead of trying to find out with Google, try this:

  1. Tell your client/boss/colleague/friend that you don’t know. Seriously. It’s OK to not know. 
  2. Just try using it for your own interests and connecting to people who are very active on Twitter or are thought leaders. If you like to talk about hockey or football, then try using Twitter to talk about hockey or football.  That’s how I ended up finding Google useful about 10 years ago; by using to find what I was looking for..

Remember; it’s not about WHAT IT DOES, but indeed WHAT IT DOES FOR YOU.

Update (July 2009): Meryl Evans has put together a very usable Twitter for Business FAQ.