Well what is Twitter,
Going by the Twitter website it describes itself as
“Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations.
At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length, but don’t let the small size fool you—you can share a lot with a little space. Connected to each Tweet is a rich details pane that provides additional information, deeper context and embedded media. You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of a Tweet as the headline, and use the details pane to tell the rest with photos, videos and other media content.”
To put that is simple terms it is a way of letting the world, be it friends or customers what is going on with you or your business. Twitter is hugely sucscesful as the messages are kept short and to the point. More often than not they will contain a link for further information like a blog post, News articule, Picture or video.
The benifit of this is that your message can be shared quickly and easily.
Example. I will tweet this out on my own twitter account to 100 of my followers. If one of them then retweets (Resends) my tweet it will then go out to all their followers. So my initial tweet could end up reaching 1,000’s of people even though I have only 100 followers. This is the magic of the Viral Effect.