The social media scene has evolved once again and micro blogging is the latest mutation to have harnessed the Web 2.0. So huge is the phenomenon that Twitter, despite being set up in October '06, is currently the third largest social network on the net. Although the company does not release user statistics, it is estimated that the service has between 5 to 6 million users and 55 million visitors per month, according to Compete.com a web traffic analysis service. Twitter is the hottest topic on the Web causing online marketers to sit up and take note.

The challenge for marketing is to figure how sites like Twitter will change the way things work. There are many advantages to the social media that search engine optimisation experts are leveraging to their needs. Micro blogging lies at the heart of the social media scene. It helps build strong relationships, add a human element to business-customer interaction and enhances networking and communication. Most of all, within the 140 characters, every tweet is equal. Your message, your ideas go out not just to users in your niche, but to reporters, journalists, bloggers and other correspondents that may otherwise never have access to you.

Micro blogging websites like all other social networks are constantly changing and hence, constantly being updated by search engine spiders. This means that the quickest way to get your message out, to get the latest content on your site indexed is via a tweet, plurk or micro blog post. Thus, the website promotion potential of these sites is massive. They can act as media outlets similar to press releases and other news services. Viral marketing works on the backbone of social networks and micro blogs can help generate the positive buzz to promote your product or services.

Unfortunately for search marketing, the onsite SEO practices like link building will not work with Twitter. This is because Twitter employs the "nofollow" attribute to user submitted links. This prevents Yahoo and Google's spiders from following the link and as a consequence they are ignored from Page Rank calculations. But the offsite SEO benefits weigh heavily for Twitter and other micro blogging sites. Of course, if Twitter were ever to change its policy then the outbound link advantages would be manifold. Nevertheless, micro blogging represents the latest iteration in the dispersal of ideas and marketers would do well to understand this new form of social media.