Twitter

I still don't get it. I thought Twitter was useless when I first heard about it and confusing when I first tried to use it. I didn't want to just "tweet" about what I was doing, I wanted conversations with other people. But as New York Times reports, Twitter is becoming more and more popular as well as useful.

"In 2006, when Twitter was just starting, the three men felt a small earthquake in San Francisco. They each reached for their phones to twitter about it and discovered tweets from others in the city. At that moment, it dawned on them that Twitter might be most useful for something else — a frontline news report, not just for friends, but for anyone reading.
Indeed, the news-gathering promise of Twitter was most evident during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November and when a jetliner landed in the Hudson River in January. People were twittering from the scenes before reporters arrived. "

Companies are even scouring Twitter now looking for "tweets" about recent products and what people think about them to get a general feel for the market. And it's free, it's the biggest tool for market research and it's being given away by every person who thinks the world care's about what they're doing.