As the fascination with Twitter goes on, markettiers4dc looked into this to find out about the use of twitter in PR.

Last week, markettiers4dc did a PRWeek podcast special with Marshall Manson from Edelman, Simon Collister of Weber Shandwick, and Helen Nowicka from Red /Shiny Red.

From a microblogging idea which began in March 2006, a research and development project by a Compete.com blog entry in Feb 2009, found that Twitter is now ranked the third largest social network (Facebook the largest in the world and MySpace second), and so putting the number of users at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visitors at 55 million.

Twitter define themselves as a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

But with celebrity tweeting taking over with Stephen Fry as one of its most famed users helping to raise its profile, what is the impact of Twitter upon PR?

Helen Nowicka, Red/Shiny Red kicked off the discussion with a word of advice when starting Twitter – to “persevere with it”, start following and get used it. Marshall Manson of Edelman continued with more tips to “listen and participate”. He said he enjoyed hearing other peoples’ perspectives and the opportunity to be proactive in choosing who you talk to – and to also be aware if and how people are talking about your brand, and the ability to engage with them, if you choose.

On the matter of other people commenting on your brand or company (particularly with reputation being so key to the PR industry), Simon Collister, Weber Shandwick and renowned blogger, recommended www.search.twitter.com as a useful way to track these comments. He suggests it can be used for PRs to communicate with journalists, brands to engage with customers, events updates/announcements – and is fundamentally a great tool for real time communication. However, Collister said it is also important to listen to what people are saying about your brand, and not just use Twitter as a broadcast tool.

So even with Twitter featuring heavily in the press and online as “flavour of the month” as Helen puts it, she further advises to step back from it and “do what’s right for your clients’ social media strategy”, as Twitter is obviously growing in popularity but still very small base.

Marshall agrees “Don’t lose perspective” and commented that facebook still dominates and there are also many other media platforms to use. He concluded saying he likes Twitter at the moment as it gives him and other followers the “opportunity to put a little bit of humanity back into how we communicate.”

So despite being number three of the largest social networking sites to date, the leader Facebook, is still trying to mimic the new kid on the block – Twitter, with some recent radical changes to its format starting by removing the friends limit which means brands can now truly reach the masses on Facebook, just like Twitter. Another change or replication – its Real-Time updates. Status updates used to be updated every 10 minutes or so. But, due to Twitters unique real-time access this gave it the edge over Facebook in terms of actual engagement. Facebook has now done the same.

And of course status updates – the whole concept of Twitter, but now Facebook has got rid of the status update and instead asks 'what's on your mind', and allows you to communicate your thoughts through photos, videos and links – not just text – offering yet another way for brands to raise their Facebook presence whilst providing the customer with more engaging content.

So with all this tweeting and facebooking what will the future hold? Who will win the race or will they continue to compete and therefore, compliment each other and progress technology and social networking even further for us. Must dash I have to go tweet…..