On 21 March 2006, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sent out his first tweet. Since then, the social networking site has grown exponentially to become one of the primary methods of online communication. From taking three years, two months and a day to rack up a billion tweets, today the site racks up a billion tweets in a week! To celebrate their success, the company took some (Twitter) personalities, and asked them who and what they follow.



Twitter has become a common medium for everyone, from celebrities to even companies and brands. Today, most brands have found their spaces on this social network, but there have been some brands which have shown extraordinary prowess with this platform, and have gotten a tremendous response in return. One such example is Old Spice.

The Old Spice Guy (portrayed by Isaiah Mustafa) started sending out personalised tweets to people who'd written/tweeted about him, and even posted a call for questions that were answered within hours through custom-made videos. This campaign not only attracted their regular fans but also a lot of celebrities; and within 24 hours, the agency uploaded around 120 personalised videos.



A great example of an Indian brand using Twitter is Hippo, a snack product by Parle Agro. The @HelloMeHippo handle on twitter asked customers to report shops where they couldn't find the product, and as soon as reports came in, ensured deliveries to those locations. This also led the brand to discover potential markets. The campaign gave Hippo a huge boost by word of mouth (rather, tweet), and was presented at TWTRCON 2010 (San Francisco). MTV India has also found a massive Twitter following thanks to their quirky responses and competitions.

In an effort to monetise advertising on the site, Twitter launched promoted tweets, trends and accounts. With Promoted Tweets, brands paid to tie their tweets to keywords. Promoted Tweets failed to catch on, Twitter launched Promoted Trends where brands can pay to head the list of trending topics. With Promoted Accounts, Twitter began suggesting accounts for users to follow. While all of these activities encouraged advertisers to look at Twitter differently, none featured the kind of success that simple conversations, or interesting, relevant Twitter feeds have had.

Where brands have succeeded through sheer spends is with celebrities---case in point: Charlie Sheen. Sheen racked up more than a million followers within 24 hours. A picture of him holding a bottle of chocolate milk created a massive amount of buzz, and he was soon hired by Internships.com to tweet about his search for an intern. Being able to garner 127,000 clicks with a single tweet shows his clout on the social networking site.

Brands are still trying to figure out how to monetise this platform, as is Twitter. But the true essence of Twitter has remained the same through the five years of its existence, and has proved the best way for brands looking to create a buzz on the platform: bite-sized conversations. Twitter's uniqueness is its simplicity as a platform to share your thoughts, and perhaps brands should adhere to that.