In March 2006, a little communications service called Twttr debuted. It began as a side project at a San Francisco podcasting company, but it wasn’t long before the side project had become the main event.

Today, just over five years later, Twitter is booming. In September 2011, the service announced that it had 100 million active monthly users, 400 million monthly visits to its website (up from 250 million in January 2011), and served billions of messages a week around the globe. In addition, the site is now available in 17 languages (and people tweet in more languages than that).

Twitter has become a key communications channel during major political events and natural disasters. And businesses now rely on it for marketing, PR and customer service.

This book will help you understand why Twitter has become a powerhouse—the ways it’s useful and addictive and unlike any other communications service—and how you can tap that power.