How to discern the twits from the tweets

 

The Twitter Book. Tim O'Reilly, Sarah Milstein. O'Reilly. 240 pages.

By Richard Pachter

My dear mother asked me recently if I tweet. I nearly choked on my chopped liver but regained my composure quickly enough to query, ''Do you know what that is, Mom?'' ''No,'' she replied sweetly,"`but everyone's doing it.''

Indeed, the mainstream media has been buzzing about Twitter and its 140-character messages, called ''tweets.'' Movie stars, media figures, captains of industry and others seem to be doing it, but how can businesses discern the twits from the tweets?''

O'Reilly and Milstein present as lucid and intelligent an overview as you'd want or need. Twitter is clearly not for everyone, but it's quickly becoming as important as e-mail for certain professions and this terrific primer shows why.

The format is concise but quite rich, and there's plenty here to convince you to employ Twitter as a marketing tool and a very good way to engage customers.

Originally published in The Miami Herald