Recently I’ve read two articles that compared the latest surge of Twitter’s popularity to that experienced by Facebook and Myspace.  Neither discussed Twitter’s differences or tried to understand the platform or it’s user community, but instead placed focus on the potential of Twitter to be a fad.  So with all the articles and blog posts out there explaining “How to Tweet” I’ve decided to write a top five list of reasons why.

1. Transparency.  One of the biggest advantages of Twitter is transparency.  It’s a double edged sword for business, but it’s the feature with the greatest potential.  Facebook is less a communication tool than a community tool or an advertising tool, and Myspace is probably an exaggerated form of both.  Twitter, because of it’s simplicity, is a simple communication tool that allows an individual (potentially on behalf of a brand) to communicate in a transparent, open, searchable way.  Blogs are edited, comments are filtered, but Twitter is open which to consumers is something they idealize.

2. Control.  If you aren’t tweeting about it, someone else is.  You want your point of view heard, tweet it.  Advertising is meant to control how consumers think about your product or brand.  Your name is the same thing, and if you want to leave the control up to the crowd, go for it.  I would prefer to hear what people are saying and weigh in.  Especially when it’s about me or my company.

3. Discovery.  Facebook and Myspace are good for connecting with people you already know, and occassionally getting a good friend recommendation.  Twitter is the only place I’ve found where I can follow anyone I like, and the only say they have in it is whether or not they follow me back.  Additionally, I can search for topics of discussion, look at people being followed by other people, and randomly get followed by other people for all the same reasons.  Twitter is about Discovery in a way that is more social than any other social technology from the web 2.0 revolution.

4. Mundanity.  To me, this is the guage of whether or not I keep following someone.  Twitter exposes the mundanity of everyday life.  Some people know how to find the humor in that, and their tweets are entertaining.  If you believe the colloquialism “one mans trash is another mans treasure,” then mundane tweets by interesting people can be fascinating.  On the other hand, if you find someone just blathering on about their trips to the grocery store or another boring ass project they are working on, then dump them.  I love that I can opt out at any time without fear of retribution or hurt feelings.  If someone has over 500 followers, they’ll never miss you.  I really wish I had that freedom on Facebook, but I’m always worried about the emails I’ll receive after un-friending people.

5.  Instant Gratification.  I’ve posted things to Facebook and Myspace before, and for that matter blogged about things before, and received zero response.  Even inflamatory titles meant to elicit a response have been ignored.  Recently though, I’ve seen fights generated from tweets that didn’t even directly name people.  I’ve watched as brands have rolled out marketing efforts or new products that generated enough feedback on Twitter in the first few hours to get a response from the respective company.  I remember this happened once with Palm when they released a netbook style palm device and were subsequently eaten alive by some of the geek blogs out there.  Within a day or so, Palm issued a formal response.  I couldn’t believe it.  It was one of the most amazing moments where the impact of web media became clear to me.  Blogs may be a great device for sounding off, but Twitter provides a way to create an instant focus group of unsolicited, unedited feedback.  The feedback loop has grown smaller and smaller, but Twitter has made the feedback loop the size of a dot.

Twitter is likely the last of the web 2.0 trends, but it’s by no means a fad.  It seems to be the most openly social of all the social networks, and the one with the most immediate impact for brands.  Social networking will fade away if no one figures out how to make money with it, but I think that ship has sailed.  Social networking for business is the new search engine optimization.  Unlike SEO however, Twitter has a higher liklihood to foster creativity and promote those with the best ideas, rather than those who learn how to manipulate the system.  If you think Twitter is simply about Tweeting 4-5 times a day, and mentioning how lame/great your lunch was, or linking to your latest blog post or press release, think again.

Twitter only becomes a fad if people stop being interesting, which I’m confident can’t happen to everyone.