The Twitter Market

I have a Twitter account, but still don't quite "get it."

I've been told by some friends (also academics) that they have found it a useful tool in communicating with their classes (e.g., homework reminders, corrections of typos on assignments, etc.). I'm going to give it a shot in the fall and will let people know how it worked. I'll be joining others at the university (like the University of Calgary library) in using Twitter as a way to pass along information.

I've also heard from some friends of mine involved in marketing and web design that its a useful tool in building web traffic to particular sites. The general statistic I've heard thrown around is that for any link you post on your Twitter update, 4-10% of your followers will visit that site. In this sense, more followers is a good thing.

So an entrepreneur seeing an opportunity has developed a new service: TweepMe will get your "thousands of followers" (4,000+) automatically for a fee of $12.95. (By the way, they currently are offering $2 off on their service.)