Twitter: Microblogging. Twitter is a social networking site where users send short messages called tweetsof 140 characters or less to their network of followers.Started in 2006,Twitter is now among the top 15 web sites in terms of traffic.Like Facebook, it has experienced tremendous growth over the last few years as businesses and individual users discover ways of using the microbloggingsite to meet their needs.At its most basic level,Twitter provides a platform for users to send out frequent status updates to those who follow them.Twitter is used by celebrities as a way of maintaining frequent contact with their fan base and by businesses and bloggers as a way of engaging their customers and directing traffic to updates on web sites.People use Twitter for personal and recreational purposes, as a way of communicating with a network of friends, family, and acquaintances. Increasingly, companies are using Twitter as a quick-response customer service channel.See Figure 8.14 and Case 1. Breaking news is distributed through Twitter networks by major news organizations and private citizens who witness events firsthand.Twitter has become an integral part of many social media campaigns directed at consumers. Even though sending and receiving tweets is like instant messaging,the site allows individuals to broadcast messages to very large groups of followers.In turn,followers can reply to tweets or forward tweets originally sent by others (called a retweet).Groups of users can engage in chats or Twitter Forums on a wide variety of topics.Follow @forums on Twitter to receive notices of upcoming chats.