Yesterday we discussed Five Wickedly Clever Ways to Use Twitter. For those of you who missed it, #1 was customer service and #2 was stealing the competition's business.

Today we're going to go into detail about the latter of those two clever twitter uses and discuss how exactly to use Twitter to poach the competition's customers.

Twitter is a paradigm shift for customer service in the sense that previously, when customers complained about a company, they typically complained directly to that company, or privately to friends and colleagues. Twitter gives...

Thanks to Wired for this update on twittering the fires of California:

"Twitter users Nate Ritter and Viss have been busy posting rapid-fire updates of the current wildfire situation in Southern California. Both of them are on the scene in San Diego, and they are doing an excellent job of providing information and news about evacuations, meeting points and anything important that local residents would need to know. Viss is also on Flickr and he's posting photos.

Nate and Viss are using the hashtag #sandiegofire. Twitter users can enter "track...

Today we got a message in about using twitter in the homeland security field. It is another great use for twitter and in an emergency when phone lines are down should prove an excellent tool. We hope that emergency never comes, but if it does...

"I'm a homeland security strategist with a reputation for innovativestrategies to empower the general public through creative use of thepersonal communication devices (ie cell phones) and apps (i.e. Twitter)that we use every day and will use in a disaster whether or not officialswant us to.

As part of my...

We posted an article called "Can you use Twitter for reference or research ?" some time ago. This new article is an addition to that and explains how to use Twitter in a Library scenario.

There are case studies and all kinds of useful info in the article at iLibrarian .  If you are a Librarian or in education, check it out!

A good article on lifehacker.org with some good uses for Twitter.

- Quick Human Answers

- Conference / News Briefings

- Friendsourcing

- Micro-Attention-Sharing

- Direct People to Good Causes

- Bonus- As advertised, Twitter answers the question “What are you doing?” It means that you can stay in touch with others without being intrusive. Just follow their twitters.

Full article here.. 

Here is an article by Stephen Francoeur that has some suggestions for using twitter for reference and research . They even list a couple of libraries that are already using Twitter and how they are using it. He then goes on to a couple of other suggested methods to use Twitter in a research or library scenario. Happy researching!

We are always looking for new ideas to let people know about to make Twitter more useful for them for business, their job, getting the message out, for fun. Here is a good idea about using twitter for IT support , if that is your thing, this is for you.

Rohit Bhargava has a good post up on how to use twitter for marketing purposes. He has some ideas:

1. Capture the live pulse of an event

2. Deepen a static experience through live commentary

3. Facilitate collaborative watching

4. Add a new dimension to promotions - Scavenger hunts, user generated content campaigns, and other reality based marketing promotions

Is Marketing on Twitter a good or bad idea? The above ideas are far from intrusive but where does the line get drawn? Or does it? What is stopping twitter from becoming a torrent of...

Mike Sansone blogs about a great idea of using twitter plugs on a web page for a team to keep in contact. You could see what everyone is saying from any device they are on, anywhere they are. Team meeting, project collaboration and many more uses. Handy! Here is the general idea... Feel like attending a meeting while fishing or golfing anyone? :)