"Twitter is a free social-networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them." - Wikipedia.

Twitter began operations in 2006. The service is like a short message service over the web, which allows users to keep friends and family in the loop. A customizable page is displayed after sign up. Users can post to this page from their mobile phone, the internet or by using any of the myriad tools available for this purpose. This helps the users to connect even when they are on their move.

A twitter post is called a tweet.

A twitter user is called a tweeple.

And the sum of tweeples and tweets constitute the tweetosphere.

Simply explained, there are two kinds of people in Twitter - the follower and the followed. The follower (say, Adam) is a person who follows some other person (say, Eve). When Eve posts something on Twitter, Adam will be immediately intimated what Eve is upto. Eve can post her tweets either publicly - will be intimated to every other follower of Eve or only to Adam. When Eve wants something that only Adam must know, she can use a '@' before Adam's profile name thus intimating Adam of her post. For example, if Eve posts, @Adam Ready for a movie tonight?. Only Adam recieves this tweet and none other.

Twitter can also be used as a communication platform for individuals and their personal social networks. This form of usage can be referred to as ambient intimacy.

Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.

Twitter is one service that is useful to both the high-profile business magnet and an average internet user.

Twitter is an efficient branding and social media tool. Many businesses are finding Twitter a powerful platform for interacting with their customers. Twitter can be used for personal branding, getting feedback on products, hiring people, getting direct traffic to your websites or even reading news. The viral nature of Twitter is proved by the revolution it caused during the recently held Iranian elections. Tweeples in Iran reported first-hand accounts of the action on the street in Twitter. It was reported during the heavy unrest in Iran, that approximately around 400 new tweets were hitting the site every minute in the #IranElection feed. And the death of The King of Pop, Michael Jackson brought in a flurry of tweets that almost crashed the Twitter server.

Already a large number of Twitter clients have hit the web. The Twitter client acts as a bridge between the user's PC and the Twitter site. Install the Twitter client and Abracadabra, you have got an easy way to post tweets instead of logging into the site frequently. A large number of Twitter clients can handle many Twitter accounts at a time. TweetDeck, twhirl, twitterfeed, Tweetie, TwitterBerry and TwitterFox are to name a few.

Large number of celebrities have already entered the tweetosphere and users can interact with them as a fellow tweeple. Adam Kutcher, of 'Punkd' fame is one of the earliest known celebrity in Twitter. He had around 1 million followers recently becoming the first person to do so.

A few of the official celebrity Twitter accounts are presented below :

• Lance Armstrong
• Britney Spears
• Al Gore
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Ashton Kutcher
• Oprah Winfrey
• Barack Obama
• Backstreet Boys

Each trend in technology comes with its own set of controversies. Twitter is no less when it comes to controversies. Twitter recently faced a flurry of harsh criticism, for being a waste of time, for being blatantly useless, and for being just another tech-age fad. Although the service may appear bland, meandering, and foolish in the eyes of many, rest assured that there will be those who use it for their benefit.