A recent Time Magazine series focused on Twitter and the "10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business". The introductory article "The Future of Twitter" falls under the category of "Profitable Microblogging" even though Twitter hasn't made a dime. That being said, Twitters value as a traffic magnet and its dramatic rise in the search engines leads this observer to conclude that it will be very profitable - check it out, Time 24/7 estimates "the company could certainly have 50 million visitors by the end of the year".

As Twitter's popularity ramps up and its usage levels grow, it could become a favorite place for companies to build their brand, perform research, instant message with customers, conduct online commerce and create new media communities for their customers and users. Some industries, like local retail, could get a realistic boost from the possibility that a community of followers will be the first ones to know when a very specific product goes on sale - say that size XL Black Patagonia micro fleece vest you've had your eye on has, just this minute, been marked down 30%! But the big guys are already spending millions and their agencies are working hard to become "Tweet-meisters" in record time to be able to explore all of the possibilities.

Of course there are risks. Time says "While there may be commercial value for using Twitter to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting."

Twitter users have established their own way of doing things - Time calls the "rules of conduct". MySpace and Facebook have experienced the same phenomena. The "rules" were not put together by Twitter, which only enforces their terms of use. AS I have discussed in other articles, most social media networks are self-governed so you and your organization companies better take that into account if and when you jump in.

So what can YOU do as a small business or organization? More on that to come from twitter.com/readywebgo!

The series of articles are all available by clicking here.

1) Hyper-Local Marketing

DG - Twitter continues the trend started by the web of leveling the playing field for small business.

2) Making Old-World Advertising Work

DG - Twitter instantly directs eyeballs to other forms of visual content.

3) Turning Wall Street on Its Head

DG - Twitter will be the stock ticker of the future - oh yeah, that's now ;-)

4) Making Blogs Count

DG - Twitter is extending the lifecycle of blogs - kinda. I have found blogs and blogging platforms great for personal and other content forms that need user or visitor interaction to be relevant like any kind of publishing or media site. But I also think that people with blogs, Facebook or MySpace sites who actually have to rely on a "real" website for their business or organizational success can cause themselves problems. Twitter's surge in the search engines is a blessing and a curse for these folks.

5) New Ways to Get Consumer Data

DG - The holy grail of online commerce are user stats and most companies spend lotsa greenback getting it. That is what all of those tracking cookies are doing when after all. And Twitter is already providing a minimum amount of stats by publishing their "Trending Topics" on every Twitter site. The richness of the stats you don't see in Trending Topics is amazing!

6) Helping TV and Print

DG - Traditional broadcast media are setting up systems that will attempt to tightly tie their audiences to them with the use of social media networks. Twitter has the potential to become a distribution method for premium content as a push/pull mechanism.

7) Expanding the Power of Micropayments

DG - PayPal and eBay are already working on Twitter applications that will make the iPhone apps heads spin!

8) Changing Telecommunications

DG - So who does talk now days? When my daughter's battery used to run down good old dad would get the call, get out of bed, and off I would go rain or shine to gladly give her a jump. Now she does a tweet and dozens of the fellas who follower her are right there - and I get to sleep ;-)

9) A New Way for the Government to Reach You

DG - Deciding what type of content is important to you is still key. Plenty of folks like Twitter for the social networking and leave it at that while others like myself have used it to mine for content that is relevant to my audiences... Note the use of the word "audiences". A Twitter audience is awesome and a blog is great, but the king is the good old website.

10) Charity Begins Online

DG - "Cause communities" on Twitter really win. The Komen Race for the Cure has used Twitter to make up gaps in their traditional fundraising efforts. And they are smart about it!