Twitter is neither the second coming nor the end of civilization.

It’s just a neat texty thing to connect people. Whether it is a blip, as Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research says here http://www.techvibes.com/blog/forresters-owyang-on-the-future-of-the-social-web (based on 10 million users versus Facebook’s 200 million plus), or it eventually outpaces other social networks or gets swallowed up by Facebook, Google, or any other brand, I agree, the functionality will remain in some system.

The trick in social media is to not get too enamored with any particular platform - they come and go - what matters is where your audience/community is at any particular point in time.

As to the naysayers who love to dwell on the mundane aspects of tweeting, here’s a news flash: humans are often boring in real life too! What I mean is that all conversation, the very nature of speech, is there are flashes of brilliance interspersed with filler. “Pretty crappy weather today eh?” “How about those ?” We are a species of ums and ahs, why would Twitter be any different?

Furthermore, Twitter is self-correcting; if someone gets carried away with the filler, you can easily unfollow! Freedom of choice reigns. Like at a cocktail party where you can disengage from the boors, a few clicks and you can restore your signal to noise ratio easily.

Engaging with customers and prospects is such a great idea, it is practically self-evident. Think old-school general store merchants who knew their customers by name.

I’m old enough to remember people squabbling about whether a web site was necessary for a business. Humans don’t react well to change, especially the upheaval we’re seeing in the communications business. But the social web WILL impact your brand, reputation, products, sales figures, stock price, competitiveness and more. Some companies get it and are diving in and learning early, others play ostrich.

Here are 16 major brands that are diving in: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/16-examples-of-huge-brands-using-twitter-for-business/7792/.

So when you see a social network do you see a threat or a chance to connect with customers and stakeholders?