Have you joined Twitter yet? I joined at the beginning of last year but only recently started to pay attention to it. The reason? – Take a look at the Twitter Page views over the last 6 months….

Once people realise that it is not just a tool to tell the world what you are doing each hour of the day, and that you can use Twitter for individual one-to-one communication like email, then this could become the biggest social networking platform on the planet.

Here are the reasons…

1) Twitter has the power of instant messaging – you can stay in constant communication – even on your mobile. You can tweet to all those following you OR just to an individual person.

2) Twitter has the convenience of email in that you can reply or not when it suits you. People are not expecting an instant reply.

3) You have to opt-in – to “follow” people in order to get messages from them so you can choose who to receive messages from and you can very easily block people if they start to spam you – just a click of a button.

4) It is transparent. You are associated with everything you post so people are unlikely to use it to spam.

5) It is not only great for social networking but you can also use it to tweet about your latest business idea, project, or product. People can choose to read or not.

6) You can link it to your blog – I have not linked mine yet but I will soon – so if you are interested in following this blog just follow me on twitter here – http://twitter.com/richardigoe – or subscribe on my RSS feed below.

7) You can link it to your mobile so you can stay in touch on the move.

If you don’t yet have a twitter account sign up with your name before it is taken by someone else!