Twitter, the hugely popular micro-blogging site, has been the subject of takeover speculation this week, with reports that preliminary talks have been held with Google. The figure knocking around in the press has been $10 billion, which even by the standards of Web 2.0 valuations looks pretty high. Twitter isn't a public company so doesn't have to publish its accounts, but it is widely understood to be loss-making, though its revenues are growing rapidly.

There are more than 250,000 registered users of Twitter, but what does that mean for you? Can Twitter really help you achieve your marketing and sales goals, or is it just a distraction? Join us to learn how leading brands are using Twitter as part of their marketing mix and to see new tools from salesforce.com that can help you integrate Twitter with your sales and marketing efforts.
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50 ways to use twitter for business is great for community enterprise marketing and advertising and marketing. Most persons presume of how to design twitter for small business only for internet promotion — and yes, it is great for internet companies. Nearby companies can profit too from frequent and fast contact with their client base. All you need is a minor imaginative thinking. Right here are some concepts to get you started out.
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Twitter's value has grown by a third in just a few weeks thanks to a bidding war between Russian and American investors.
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America’s biggest corporations have dramatically increased their participation in Twitter, according to “The Fortune 500 and Social Media,” a yearly report from the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Three in five Fortune 500 companies now have an active Twitter account, compared with 35% in 2009. This is even more than the number that have Facebook accounts, at 56%.
More than a third of the companies with Twitter accounts regularly responded to consumers with @ replies or retweets within a brief period of time, making a solid effort to engage the 26 million US adults eMarketer estimates use Twitter at least monthly.

What’s a social media business card? As the name implies, its a virtual card that will hold all your social network identities just like in a business card so you can hand it over, or share the link to anyone. Its a fairly simple concept, where you just need to give some details of your social media details and it auto generates the card for you. Here are five such tool that will help you to make your social media business cards! http://is.gd/h7YIb

For some time now, I've been using various tools in Twitter marketing alongside with programs in order to make cash on Twitter. Among those are Tweet Adder, Sponsored Tweets, Twiends and MyLikes. Therefore, I've decided to offer my experience with these software programs to make suggestions and offer assistance to boost your success. http://hubpages.com/hub/twitter-marketing-tools

Social networking is one of the latest trends when it comes to internet marketing. Almost all leading online businesses have twitter accounts and huge number of followers. Article marketing is one other proven way to attract the attention of visitors. Combining both would be an innovative way to attract traffic to your business websites. After all it is the amount of traffic to a website that determines the success of online businesses. http://is.gd/gSibu

The cost of placing advertisement is increasing with the plummeting of economic standards. In a similar vein, social marketing has been on the increase the business agendas of small-scale business. This has been made possible with the use of twitter as a strategy for marketing. Read: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/DownloadDoc.aspx?doc_id=60356738&ref_url=

The New York Times calls Twitter "one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet." TIME Magazine says, "Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app," and Newsweek noted that "Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter."

What Social Media tools does your business use to speak with customers? Vote and see the world results: http://twtpoll.com/u4y99o

It's the new generation of customer service. Many companies are using Twitter to keep in touch with their existing customers and to build their clientele. Realtor Keith Allen Allborty uses his account to post open houses and keep up on upcoming events. "I've met people in Davenport, Blue Grass and East Moline. And for business, my business is meeting people." This week, Qwest Communications started using Twitter as a new way of serving their customers. Qwest-Twitter Creator Joshua Sippola says it's just another way to reach out. "We're looking to be where they are, to be a convenience to them." Twitter was publically launched in August of 2006. It has been noted as the fastest growing social networking site in the world.
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There is a race to bring live video to the masses of the Web. Both Justin.tv and Ustream ().tv have had superb growth over the last 12 months and have used Twitter and other social media services to spread streaming videos across the Web. Justin.tv, however, has taken the use of social media a step farther by completely integrating MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter across their website and within all of their video pages. These integrations allow users to share videos in status updates across all of these social media services, as well as connect with friends from each network inside of Justin.tv chat.Instead of just a single tab for chat, Justin.tv now has four tabs: Chat (for regular chatting on Justin.tv), Facebook (), Twitter, and MySpace (), each with unique options for the user to spread live video across the Web. Here’s how they work.

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If Google isn't in talks to buy Twitter, it should be. Specifically, it should offer the company $1 billion, cash. Why? Five reasons:
Google needs a huge new growth engine and Twitter might just fit the bill. The current search product cycle is coming to an end. Google needs an "Office" to go with its "Windows." It hasn't found one yet. Twitter--and real-time search--could end up being a monster. If Google waits around to see whether it really WILL be a monster, Twitter will be a hell of a lot more expensive. Remember when Yahoo's Terry Semel whiffed on buying Google?
Twitter is a hell of a lot more relevant to Google's business than other big Google ideas, such as YouTube or Larry Page's plan to have Google solve the world's energy crisis (see his crazy talk of two years ago). Twitter is also about communications, which is the one part of the content-communications-and-commerce Internet tripod that Google is still weak in.
$1 billion is couch change for Google. Google generates $1 billion of cash every two months. If Twitter ends up being worth $0, as some people persist in thinking, Google can just say "oops" and take a minor write-off. If Twitter ends up being worth a lot more than $1 billion, however, as we and others think is likely, Google will make money. If it ends up being a monster, Google will make a lot of money.
Twitter could conceivably threaten Google's cash cow--search. This "real-time search" meme is actually a compelling story-line. If you want to know what people are talking about right now, you go to Twitter, not Google. Twitter hasn't figured out how to make bank off that yet, but it may well do so. Remember how much ridicule was heaped on Google's worthless "search engine" in the early days?
Like Google, Twitter is already a verb. What company do you know of that owns two verbs?
Would $1 billion be enough to get the Twitter boys to part with their baby? It might, actually. $1 billion is still a lot of money, especially for a company with no revenue. And Google's global distribution and technology infrastructure would be a help to Twitter. So they'd be silly not to take the offer seriousy.
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