Twitter For Dummies

Twitter is like mass text messaging, limited to 140 characters. If you use Facebook, it’s the same thing as your status update. In fact, Twitter can be synced to Facebook, so your "tweets" automatically become your status.

The tweets come from whomever you choose to follow.

Ashton Kutcher’s a big Twitter user with over 1.7 million followers finding him surprisingly interesting. Ellen DeGeneres, Martha Stewart and Lance Armstrong are all embracing "Tweeting," as are newspapers and TV networks, with actual news alerts.

Closer to home, Governor Pawlenty "Tweets" his daily actions.

Simply put, Twitter is real-time information instead of someone's random thoughts. Set up properly, it's like a real-time wire service on your computer, or your smart phone.

David Krecji is in public relations and teaches a class at the University of Minnesota on how to use social media in PR and marketing.

Best Buy, for example, has written a program that constantly monitors the twittersphere.

Krecji says its modern market research that doubles as customer service.

And "Twitter quitters" are high. According to Neilsen Research, 60 percent who try it are gone in a month.