With just 140 characters, people send a note to friends and followers to answer the question, What am I doing right now?

Who would have ever thought that the simplest of social website concepts would become so prolific?  

We all know that Facebook is very interesting because we can follow our friends and see status updates, and see their pictures, and SuperPoke them.   However, who could have imagined that a social networking dedicated exclusively to the status update would become so popular?

I am specifically referring to Twitter.com.   This fairly new website is quickly becoming the new phenom in Internet marketing.

No matter how silly or mundane the concept appears at first, it is very cool.   A few years ago, nobody would have thought anyone would care if say for example - I am going for a coffee at Starbucks with Joanne.  Nowadays, people are very interested in the minutia of each other’s lives.

Well add that to the exponential growth rate of populations on these viral social networking sites, and it introduces a very powerful tool.

You see, Twitter.com allows you to post as many updates as you want in as short a time as you can.  Most people don’t want to be spam-like with their posts, but many people do add multiple updates per day.

Also, Twitter.com allows you to post your URL into the update.  The benefit here is twofold.   First of all, anyone who is subscribing to follow your updates on Twitter.com will see your hyperlink and may click to your website.   Second of all, Twitter is gaining a good reputation in the Internet world, and you may find that Google regards links from highly active user profile pages as being from a good neighborhood.

For example, take the Twitter profile page of EZineArticles.com editor Chris Knight.  http://twitter.com/ChrisKnight .  He has thousands following him and he is following thousands of people.  As of time of writing his Twitter profile page has a Google PR of 5.  That is fairly impressive for just another profile page on a social network website.

The implication of the second factor is that Google will identify many inbound links from higher page rank pages, to your website.  While your own page rank itself is not a critical factor, it is important to have links coming in from highly regarded sites.