At first glance, Twitter may only look like a site full of Facebook status updates. But to those of us Twaddicts (Twitter addicts), we know that it is so much more.

Among other things, Twitter allows you to: communicate with celebrities (if you’re interesting enough this can be a two-way conversation), stay posted on what your favorite celebrities are doing and/or thinking, keep tabs on where your favorite celebrities are, know what celebrity friends your favorite celebrities have, did I mention Celebrities?! Celebrity usage is the driving force of Twitter’s popularity. The fact that Twitter is so easy to use, it allows celebrities to do-it-themselves. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about talking to a publicist or personal assistant; you know you’re getting the real deal. If it weren’t for celebrities being addicted to Twitter, it would not be as addicting for the average Joe.

Following celebrities on Twitter is so popular, there is a website dedicated to it. On CelebrityTweet.com, there is a list a celebrities whose tweets are posting in real time on the site. Celebrities were always sitting so high up on a pedestal and now, thanks to Twitter, we can reach them and say hello everyday until they say hello back. Sounds a bit stalker-like, but it works.

Some celebrities are even hip to SayNow, a free site that allows you to receive voice messages from your favorite celebrities. I have to admit, when I get a text to my phone that one of my favorite celebrities just left a voice message, I listen to the message pretending it was sent to me personally.

I must thank Twitter for allowing me to be introduced to this site which I so love. While you are getting your heavy dosage of celebrities, you may want to chat with other people and look popular yourself with a lot of followers. You can go to wefollow.com and find people with the same interest who you can follow and they may follow you back.

However, the fastest way to get quality followers who are genuinely interested in what you have to say goes back to celebrities. If you can get a celebrity to retweet one of your tweets, you will see your followers dramatically increase before your eyes.

Again, you must say something interesting or extremely funny within the 140 character limit. You may want to check out this Twittionary full of Twitter lingo that will help you say everything you want to say using 140 characters.

Twitter allows you to get a good understanding of celebrity personalities. Some celebrities may annoy you with their tweets and cause you to stop following them. If you love everything about celebrities and want a way to be in the know, go register to Twitter and start following your favorite celebrities now. It will become your favorite pastime!

Twitter houses a significant number of people. Let’s start with a few examples of small companies using twitter to reach their clients we have Jetpens.com, Field Notes, and Doane Paper. Jetpens is an imported Japanese pen company, that broadcasts things like pen reviews, pen giveaways, sales, and offers on money off, along with their new products in their updates. Field Notes recently gave away notebooks as well. Doane Paper is a company that sells 3 products, all of them based around the idea of graph paper+lined paper = best paper for everyone. It’s exploded with a cult following, especially among fountain pen users, because the paper takes the ink well, and has small spacing, for those with tiny handwriting.

On top of that, we have some larger companies, with representatives that form the all-important human side of their huge business. Uni-ball has a person, Sharpie does as well(despite being the same company overall), Staples and Office Depot. The point of these is having a part of a company that will actually talk to you on a daily basis. Comparing favorite pens with a member of the Uni-ball corp definitely encourages you to get their pens next time, or at least remember them when you’re shopping.

A lot of people still only see twitter as a way to stalk their favorite celebrities, or perhaps to interact with Neil Gaiman, or Amanda Palmer. The difference, though, is between the celebrities who tweet back, like Felicia Day, and the celebrities who don’t tweet back. The ones who tweet back are likely building a dedicated fan base around the fact that they’re talented, social, and willing to talk with their fans.

A similar thing is done by Webcomic artists, such as Lar deSouza and Sohmer, the creators of Looking For Group and Least I Could Do. Perhaps a more recognizable pair is Gabe and Tycho, of Penny Arcade fame. Jeph Jaques, who writes and illustrates Questionable Content, also keeps and updates a twitter.

Most of these semi-famous people use it to let their fans in on their daily lives, for things such as grocery shopping, movies they watch, whatever they’re randomly doing(which brings to mind the night a few weeks ago that Amanda Palmer accidentally took over the internet because she didn’t want to clean her apartment—you can google or check the tags on twitter for “#lofnotc” if you’re interested about learning more.

Twitter has many different uses. For companies, and for individuals. Mainly companies use it to immediately broadcast things like sales, or the above-mentioned giveaways. But for individuals, it’s an easy to way to follow your favorite blogger, even if you’re not familiar with RSS feeds.

The recently added @ tab on the right-hand side, allows you to see how many times you’ve been re-tweeted by people. And lastly, my definition of Twitter: Twitter: A selective, global chatroom that has the pulse of the world. Whatever we’re concerned about, it’s on there. Whatever we’re thinking about, it’s in there.

It’s a new way to connect without being too personal or too invading, a fun new way to send messages across the inter-webs.

Humanity has reached a point in time where instant-gratification has taken over the world. Twitter has out done the demand for instant-gratification.

Whether you are a regular person on the Internet, or a business trying to please their consumers, Twitter creates the ability to keep everyone up to date instantly with a simple press of a button. There is no need to purchase your favorite gossip magazine because celebrities have turned into their own paparazzi. Instead of waiting until your local news hits the air on your TV, you can get instant updates on news while it’s actually happening.  Remember the pilot that landed on the Hudson River in New York?  CNN picked that up from a passenger putting it on Twitter as it happened!

Businesses now can keep their consumer‘s up to date on new products, events and job openings. Everyone is taking advantage of Twitter to network, advertise and reach the world with a press of the button. You do not have to have a computer at home to enjoy the networking ability twitter supplies. As long as you have a cell phone, you can keep up to date with everyone.

When you have a fancy iPhone or Blackberry, you can get numerous applications to use Twitter in the normal way, but even a regular cell phone will en enough to use Twitter.  If it’s important for you to keep up to date with companies, celebrities or just even your friends, simply add each important Twitter user to mobile updates. After someone tweet(ing)s, instantly you will receive a text message letting you know what’s going on. If you’re out and about and would like to keep others updated on your life, you are able to text twitter and your tweets will be refreshed with your message.

Every can benefit from the use of Twitter. Companies can save money on advertising when they can reach millions of consumers instantly with their promotions. Celebrities have been known to keep their fans up to date with event information and sometimes they take the advantage to promote their favorite cause. Your message can be heard instantly for free, what can get better than that? What could possibly top Twitter? Twitter is a genius concept and should be used by everyone.

Critics will say that nobody cares what you’re doing from one minute to the other, but I find that keeping a random journal of a day is not only fun, but interesting, and has been the source of many a conversation between my friends and I.   Though people are critical of Twitter’s purpose and don’t understand a point to it, its growing user base and versatility – for business, news, and getting out of jail (like the American student who kept in touch with his friends at home when he was jailed in Egypt – his Twitter correspondences allowed people to get in touch with the proper authorities and free him) are securing it as an essential part of the Web 2.0 experience that is focused on the user and the ‘me’ experience.

If you don’t already have a Twitter, maybe you should reconsider why and possibly join today.

Twitter’s services aren’t limited to only Twitter users. If you want to keep everyone on Facebook up to date, applications allow you update your Facebook status with your most recent tweet. It’s likely that many of your friends in your Facebook network are not yet members of Twitter, so you may find that updating multiple statuses becomes cumbersome. What you may not know is that you can link your Twitter to your Facebook account! That’s right, if you update your Twitter status, you can automatically update your Facebook status. This allows you to begin to build a Twitter network, while keeping your Facebook status up-to-date at the same time.

Additionally, Facebook notes that your status is being updated via Twitter, which should build interest in the site, and hopefully attracting more followers to your Twitter stream. The best way to do this is to log into your Facebook account, and search for “Twitter.” Add the Twitter app, as you would add any other application within Facebook. You want to make sure it is set to automatically update Facebook status when you update your Twitter account.

Now a word of warning here… When you use the standard Twitter application to update your Facebook with your tweets, it can be a bit overwhelming for your Facebook friends! They are not used to so much activity from you. The solution to that is NOT to select the standard Twitter app in Facebook, but to select the Selective Twitter App, which will only update your Facebook when you add #fb to your tweets. This puts you in control of what you ‘tweet’ on Facebook.

If you tend to be on MySpace a lot, you can use the application Twitter Sync to synchronize your MySpace status with Twitter. I personally have a MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. Some of my friends belong to only one of the three networks, and it gets hard to keep up with everyone.

This way you can link your Facebook with Twitter and use MySpace’s Twitter Sync to reach everyone at once. After updating your status on MySpace, you can use Twitter Sync that posts my update to Twitter which will post my update to Facebook. Now you only have to update once to reach multiple audiences.  Twitter also enables you to link your updates with your website or blog by a Twitter-generated JavaScript that automatically includes your recent updates.

Advantages in using Twitter can be discovered on a daily basis.