By Melanie Mendiola

During the last week of November, Facebook, the social networking Web site, reached a milestone — 350 million users. On its heels and growing in popularity is Twitter.

For the cyber-ignorant, Twitter, according to Jason Salas, interactive media director and KUAM newscaster for Pacific Telestations, in a presentation to the Guam Chapter of the American Marketing Association, Twitter is: 1) a microblogging service, on which users can report what they are doing as often as they like, 2) a social network, where friends of a person/business/organization can subscribe to feeds, and 3) a multidevice platform that can be both updated and read via different tools including e-mail, phone and desktop. Twitter has gained popularity due to its ability to shorten the time from which an event occurs to when people find out about it. For example, when Michael Jackson died, Twitter beat many of the major news outlets in reports to the media. President Barack Obama has an official Twitter site so readers can keep real-time tabs on administration issues.

Jenevieve Sablan, general manager of Big Fish Creative Services, recommends sites like Twitter and Facebook to clients in order to expand the mediums of marketing communication. “Twitter is another form of direct marketing,” she says. “It expands [a company’s] reach. You may have a Web site already, but it supports online marketing efforts.” According to Salas, there are approximately 400 “tweeters” on Guam, which include media companies, car dealerships, restaurants and bands in addition to individuals’ sites.

According to Kristine Lujan, director of agency services for Glimpses Advertising, the types of companies that usually benefit from Twitter are companies that have daily or weekly updates that need to be passed on to their customers, such as cellular phone providers, nightclubs and restaurants. “Basically, if your company has something to say on a regular basis to your audience, you can benefit by using Twitter. And of course, it’s a great place to target the 18 to 25 range,” says Lujan. Salas concurred with Lujan regarding the user set – most common being college students and users with 2G mobile devices and above.

Businesses wishing to expand their profile locally or even worldwide, will find that setting up a Twitter account is a very cost-effective route to take. According to all sources, the only cost to the user of the site, is the time. As far as a time commitment for businesses and staff, “Social marketing is a daily thing regardless of whether the medium is Twitter, Facebook, or any of the other numerous social networking Web sites,” Sablan says. The time invested is not just updating information, but finding out what is going on in the marketplace, she adds. “While Facebook is currently [the most] popular on Guam [as opposed to Twitter], it is important to keep up to date of what the latest trends are. This is what keeps businesses ahead competitively.”

Lujan says her biggest concern regarding the use of Twitter is using the medium to Spam clients: “The last thing you want to do is alienate your followers, or make them feel like you are just a nuisance.” She advises to “Tweet sparingly, and give your potential and current customers information they can use.”

Salas says that drawbacks are generally regarding quality, not quantity. His concerns include all posts being public, no guarantee that Twitter service will be available (as well as connection issues), sloppy storytelling and lack of real content in some communications, and “needle in a haystack – every Tom, Dick & Barack on Twitter.”