Okay, you don't need to be on Twitter. And sure, in a couple of years it'll be superseded by the next new hotness. However, those who dismiss it as a frivolous time-waster are way off the mark. Twitter's not going to replace other forms of communication, but it's a good indicator of how information is going to be disseminated in the coming years.

Twitter is a social search engine

Retail companies routinely search Twitter for mentions of their products, which can be great when they respond personally to complaints and problems. (Or creepy, for example when iStockPhoto started following me a minute after I tweeted about them.) A colleague whose company launched a new high-profile website for the NFL made sure to search Twitter for comments about the site so she'd know what needed to be fixed.

Twitter is public relations with a human touch

So maybe I wasn't thrilled about being followed by iStockPhoto, but here's how they could have managed this better: by responding directly to my tweet with a personal message. Many companies (notably, JetBlue and Zappos) are using Twitter to connect to customers on a one-to-one level, responding personally to complaints and suggestions. When was the last time you were contacted personally by an airline representative after you experienced a late flight or lost luggage? This is the sort of humane response that generates fanatical customer loyalty.

Twitter is an RSS feed

Everyone I used to read on RSS is now on Twitter. And it's better in this format because I can easily screen the stories I want to read and the ones I want to ignore. Furthermore, because I follow an active group of twitterers from my industry, I'm constantly inundated with links to all kinds of articles I'm interested in. Better than an RSS feed, it's a filtered feed—people whose opinions I trust have already chosen which articles or news items they think are worth passing along.

Twitter is a PR machine

I get pretty good mileage from my email newsletter to clients. But the list of recipients is small and it doesn't have a life beyond their inboxes. By contrast, I recently tweeted a link to an article I'd written and within two days had received ten times as many hits to the page as my newsletter had generated. People retweeted (forwarded) the link to their friends and it spread outward quickly, reaching people all over the world.

Twitter is breaking news

Currently, I get notices from Metro rail telling me about delays and outages on the subway system (@DCMetroRed); the CDC has been providing Twitter updates on the swine flu outbreak (@cdcemergency); the NewsHour was the first to twitter breaking news of Arlen Specter's recent defection from the Republican party (@NewsHour); and a local journalist is keeping me up to date on happenings in the Silver Spring community (@sspenguin).

On the first stage of the Tour of California, eager online viewers were treated to a video blackout because the weather was too bad for the on-course cameras to broadcast. Instead, Twitter picked up the slack. Folks listening to race radio tweeted updates and uploaded pictures. Johan Bruyneel, team manager for Lance Armstrong's Astana team, sent tweets from the team car which was right behind the peloton. You almost couldn't ask for better coverage.

Twitter is outreach

You don't have to have breaking news to tweet. Membership organizations, museums, local businesses can all make use of Twitter's brief, informal messaging to send frequent updates about events, discounts and sales, articles and blog posts, company news and so on. Your followers are a self-selecting group who are actively interested in hearing from you. (Okay, apart from the spammers who are only trying to generate reciprocal follows.) Depending on the kind of outreach you do, Twitter is often better than a newsletter because it's timely, short, goes directly to the person's phone or desktop.

Still not convinced?

Twitter is not for everyone, and I'll be the first to admit it will consume as much time as you allow it to. However, even if you don't decide to make use of Twitter, it's important to understand what it is. Whether we like it or not, eventually something like Twitter will be the primary mode of business communication.

[ Kim Bieler wrote this article and she welcomes your comments. ]