There has been a ton of press on Twitter in the last couple months.  So much so that Oprah has now done a show all about Twitter.  She does a great job of explaining what Twitter is in the above  YouTube clip.  As marketers here are a couple things to keep in mind:

• Twitter has no revenue stream — no business model.  The logical model would be paid key word driven advertising.  Where you could post an ad next to a Tweet that includes the desired key word.  The problem with this is that Twitter is a social networking platform and Click Through Rates have so far been unsustainable on SocNet sites.
• A business can start their own Twitter feed for a very live and personal connection to the brand’s fans.  The data suggests that the traffic is mainstream — check out these articles from ComScore.  But as they note, the mainstream-ness of the traffic may be more from the media coverage then actual usage.

http://www.comscore.com/blog/2009/04/twitter_traffic_explodes.html

http://www.comscore.com/blog/2009/04/breaking_news_and_making_news.html

• For ideas of what to do with your Twitter account check out this post by Chris Brogan:

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

• Is Twitter an avenue you should explore?  There is no cost to entry other than the commitment — which is significant.  You’ll need a resource to keep active in the Twitter community to make the effort worthwhile.  Check out Twitter feeds from Sprint and Graco for ideas of what marketers are doing on Twitter. To answer this question ask yourself:

1. Is your audience on Twitter
2. Do you have a robust mutli-touch Social Networking program that would benefit from Twitter?  Twitter is not a isolated tactic — it needs to be apart of a complete communication strategy.
3. Do you have the resources needed to commit to Twitter.  Don’t just post your monthly coupon offer — it’s not worth it.  You’ll need a community manager to spend significant time managing your Twitter efforts.