by Amelie Mueller

Created on: July 10, 2009

In a March 2009 survey posted by the Business Insider to measure the unique registered users of social networking sites Twitter paled in comparison with their 7 million figure when compared to Facebook's 65 million. However, take note, in the same survey you will see startling, if not record setting numbers when you take a closer look at the growth rate. While Facebook enjoyed a very comfortable 228% growth over the last year, Twitter hit it out of the ballpark with it's 1382% growth. What's important to consider is that Twitter's staggering numbers are not expected to slow down anytime soon. The recent attention the company has received from all the major and local media outlets attracts new members daily. Facebook is expected to plateau and start its steady downward decent along with MySpace.

How are all these charts and calculations relevant to you? Simple. Twitter is quickly making itself the leader in the social networking world. Its hip, trendy, and the place to be if you are not a in the 12-17 year old demographic that turns off anyone outside of that age group. Instead of countless code generators designed to make your profile page into a flashing, sparkling, and extremely annoying nuisance to navigate page, Twitter is inspiring the development of useful applications that allow its users to easily build, manage, and maintain their web presence.

Twitters own native search application is a good place for the beginning twit to test out the waters and see what's out there. You can search for people you know using your email contact list, or by inputting the names of your friends. Looking to meet new people? Type in a keyword or two that you have a particular interest in and see who else is tweeting about it.

Once you have a handful of followers and are following a few people yourself, there's a powerful web-based application called Mr. Tweet that takes building your social network to the next level. By simply inputting your Twitter handle and password, the website generates a list of fellow Twitter users that would specifically appeal to you, based on your existing network, what your tweeting about, and who's tweeting about you. Mr. Tweet then keeps the list updated on a regular basis so that a new supply of interesting folks are always at your fingertips.

At this point, like most if us, you will probably have a slight addiction to your twitter feed and will feel the irresistible need to take it with you everywhere you go. Twitters text updates are

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