Even if you don’t grasp the hype surrounding twitter, it doesn’t hurt to be well-rounded and have a little bit of knowledge about the craze. So here is a brief description of the service, what it’s being used for, and some of the jargon you’ll encounter in the twitterverse.

Twitter is an internet-based micro-blogging site where anyone can create a free account and post messages of up to 140 characters (about two sentences) from their laptop or phone. When you create an account, you choose a “handle” or name you want posts to show up under. Anyone can read your posts, unless you place restrictions on it, but a person has to be your “follower” for your posts or “tweets” to automatically show up on their home page or Twitterfeed.

Individuals use it to comment on what they’re doing right at that moment, pastors use it to update twitterers on how vacation Bible school is going, and companies use it to update the community on events and new products. Zappos, the shoe company, has used it to promote new products and their buyout by Amazon as well as to reward Twitter followers by flying two to Vegas for lunch and a tour with the company president.

If you like something you read, you can retweet (RT) or post the same thing on your site, but you have to give credit where credit is due. You can also create a private reply to a tweet by doing a DM or direct message. You can also do a public reply by doing the “at” symbol and the twitterer’s handle so it might look like @lilnorthrn. Banks are using this as a way to connect with those who have questions. A bank marketing officer can do a search on Twitter to see who has questions about financial products and then respond with information or a link to help answer that question. Trainers are using it as a way to ask for product recommendations from other trainers and comment on events they've been to. ASTD has used it as a way to get association information out and individual chapters also have twitter groups like @ASTDNWA.