Journalists report those Five Ws (plus one H) of an event, then they end up reporting the full story.  Small business owners answer those questions of a new venture, and they get the full story as well.

But for months, both are still trying to explore the full potential of Twitter.  As of last week, this is how the story has developed so far, from a business perspective:

Who… is a Twanker and Twidiot? Both are people who use Twitter for impractical reasons, according to the Influential Marketing Blog – a Twanker, purely for self-promotion and a Twidiot, solely for insignificant updates, such as what they ate for breakfast.

The blog’s “10 Basic Rules of Twitter (and How to Avoid Being a Twanker)” is a good start for beginners, though this etiquette guide could also set a few veteran users straight.  For one, it recommends referring to people by their Twitter names on Twitter.

Imagine Twitter is like a play and every user is an actor. You wouldn’t call a fellow actor by their name on stage,” the rule reads, “you would use the character’s name.” Read more at the Influential Marketing Blog.

What… does Chris Brogan do with Twitter? Well, first, here’s why small business owners should care: Brogan, president of New Media Marketing Labs, works with mid to large-sized businesses to improve their online marketing and public relations communications.  But his free services are just as valuable. Throughout the day, at chrisbrogan.com, he serves as a social guru for people with any type of business.
Brogan has more than 93,000 followers because instead of answering, “What are you doing?” as Twitter prompts, he answers, “What has your attention?” And with that question in mind, he promotes products, people, services and other things he thinks are cool at a 12:1 ratio — “12 them, 1 me.” Read more at ChrisBrogan.com.

Where… is that Tweet coming from? According to recent developments, you may find out real soon. Twitter is working on adding latitudinal and longitudinal data to tweets – meaning, that the 140-character messages could also be given an exact location.

Since the location data would only be stored with a Tweet for a short period of time, marketing experts see the feature as best fit for limited-time offers.

“A small business on Twitter could potentially use the location feature to reach out to local customers, or a Twitter user hungry for pizza could search for nearby pizza joints offering specials,” said Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times. Read more at the Twitter blog.

When… is Twitter going to cater more to the needs of business owners? Sooner than some may think. Though Twitter will remain a free service, premium commercial accounts with access to detailed analysis are currently in the works, as reported by DigitalBeat.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone also hinted toward the debut of a new set of corporate-specific application programming interfaces (APIs) that would allow business users to “more effectively engage with the community, while increasing strategic visibility,” as Solis said.  “We want to build statistics or analytics that let users know – ‘How am I doing on Twitter?’” Stone said. Read more at DigitalBeat.

Why… use Twitter when my customers don’t? As founder of the first Twitter for Business consultancy and co-author of Twitter for Dummies, Laura Fitton (@pistachio) has found five major reasons why.
For one, Fitton points out that Twitter can be used as a platform to aggregate opinions built around any business or industry. Furthermore, said opinions could be gathered via widget and posted onto your business Web site – no Twitter account necessary.

“That’s a great free customer sentiment engine, way to listen  to what’s really going on,” Fitton said.
Read more at HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog.

How… can one drive traffic with repeat Tweets? In two rather informal experiments, Entrepreneur magazine columnist Guy Kawasaki decides to see if taking self-promotion to another level would reap even greater rewards (in this case, clickthroughs).

In his first, he reposted one Tweet four times, approximately eight hours apart: “Power tip for anyone interested in social media: sign up for this. http://om.ly/FmGG I use it every day to find stories to Tweet.” The four posts received more than 5,000 clickthroughs, and also resulted in 700 people signing up for the service he plugged, SmartBrief.

The experiments also yielded a few complaints, though Kawasaki is hardly losing sleep over them.
“I look at complaints this way: What would happen if you told Jack Bauer (“24”) that you’re going to stop watching his show because of all the Cadillac commercials?” Read more at the American Express OPEN Forum.

Readers, is tweeting now a part of your daily business routine? Explain why or why not in the comments.

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Follow and un-follow
Twitter enables you to follow the postings of registered users on the site; they can opt to follow you.  Is it impolite to not follow someone who’s following you?  While many advocate for reciprocity, the reality is that following too many Tweeters can eat up time and obscure postings that would be meaningful to you.  Do follow followers who may provide helpful information, but otherwise be selective.

Know the rules
On Twitter, you are limited to 140 characters per posting.  However, it’s still wise to use real words and abbreviations; don’t use SMS-style text (SMS-style shorthand, the type used for text messaging).  Full sentences are not required and symbols, such as “@” and “=” can be acceptable when needed to meet the 140-character limit.  Definitely shorten URLs (using TinyURL or other sites) to save characters.

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For two local food businesses, Twitter has helped two local food businesses both raise and manage rising demand. One request for a breakfast wrap directed to Houston-based Coffee Groundz led to the first ever reported take-out order on Twitter, which are now taken on a regular basis. Meanwhile, the loyal following of the Kogi Korean BBQ-To-Go taco trucks in the Los Angeles area can see where they park next through the business’s Tweets.

And for the Queensboro Shirt Company in North Carolina, Twitter has become a way to reach out.

“Mainly we have been trying to work on finding the customers where they are, instead of trying to make them come to us,” said Kate Elzer-Peters, social media coordinator of the custom apparel company. In a phone interview, Elzer-Peters – who also updates the company’s blog, plus its Facebook and YouTube pages – explained to goWholesale how the work relationship with Twitter has developed since the account’s activation last October:

• First impressions: At first, Elzer-Peters did not know what to think. Though Twitter became a hot topic in a few marketing e-mails she received, she still had to wonder: why would you want to do that, honestly? But the more she read about the service, the more she saw the value in its conversations. “If you read the Tweets one at a time, they don’t always make a lot of sense,” she said. “But if you follow them for a while, you can start to see what their habits are like, what they like to do, what they are interested in – a more complete picture.”
• What it does: Elzer-Peters updates the Queensboro Twitter with sales promotions and responses to questions and feedback. She also regularly checks its feed, to get what she calls “a pulse of what people are thinking around the country.” With this, she can figure out which customers would crave fleece and which would want polos, in real time.
• How it helps: Since its operations are mostly online, Elzer-Peters has found that the company can develop customer relations via Twitter that it would not have been able to do otherwise. “Since we are an Internet business, we don’t interact a lot, especially face-to-face, with our customers,” she said. “But I’ve been Tweeting back and forth with some of them, and that can develop into more of a relationship.”
• Progress made: Elzer-Peters has garnered more than 450 followers, fielded a few hiring requests, and landed at least one purchase during a recent hat sale. (A Tweeted “thank you” serves as proof.) She hopes though to deliver more through Twitter in the near future and is encouraging use of her services in the meantime.” If we make a mistake with your order, we ALWAYS try to correct it, so make sure you let us know! Tweet at me for help!,” a recent update says.

Retailers: what are your thoughts on Twitter? What problems have you had or progress you made with the service?

A: No longer focused on just individual users, social networking Web sites have been creating new tools that go beyond what basic feedback additions – a customer service e-mail, a product review feature, a blog – have done to humanize the online business transaction.

“Now it’s really about trying to connect emotionally, even in a business-to-business level,” said Brian Easter, CEO of web design and marketing company NeboWeb.

Since its launch in August 2006, Twitter has had web experts questioning whether a business would have any use for a site with a prompt that reads, “What are you doing?” Their conclusion nowadays: yes, but only if a business can prove that someone is actually listening.

In August, FaceReviews deemed Starbucks as one of 34 “Brands That Suck on Twitter,” though it was a title it had to retract three hours later. The reason why – a post that read, “We have our own ideas about what we’re going to do here. We’d love to hear from you, do you (or anyone else) have requests?”

“Instead of answering the question, ‘What are you doing?’, answer the question, ‘What has your attention?” said Chris Brogan, social media and networking advisor. Indeed, while Twitter can open up a business to more criticism, it also provides more opportunities to respond back.

In addition, the latest social networking developments from Google and Facebook also focus even more on the relationship between the business and the customer. On Thursday – and within hours of each other – they both announced the launches of their latest interactive features for business Web sites, which customers can access with log-ins they already have.

But as they provide the same convenience, each of these platforms opens marketplaces in different ways. Open also to Yahoo, AIM, and OpenID users, Google’s Friend Connect offers gadgets – including discussion and product review walls – that can be easily posted on a business Web site. Meanwhile, Facebook Connect allows individual users to carry both profile information and social networks as they navigate sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, so they can later post their activity on their News Feeds.

“That is really going to speed up Web 2.0 integration in more traditional sites,” Easter said, later adding that with usage of these platforms, the business Web site “becomes an instant community, so to speak.”

In sum, social networking Web sites provide what should primarily be used as other means of customer service. If used solely for additional promotion, a business is bound to seem fake – when in fact, they work best for the business with nothing to hide.

I have beef with Twitter. To me, it’s an oddly socially accepted and encouraged form of stalking where the "victims" volunteer themselves.

Aside from the creepy factor, from its inception I have never really understood how thousands of people #1 care so much about what other people are doing that they would subscribe to and check instant updates via a personal feed, and #2 that said number of people actually believe that that many OTHER people care enough about their minute happenings so much that they’d consistently update these feeds.

Twitter’s usefulness has long been debated and I have clearly chosen sides. But I can’t argue with the fact that Twitter’s traffic numbers have nearly doubled in recent months . Looks like more and more people from my side are hopping the fence to join the other "volunteer victims" and "stalkers"…traitors…

Okay, perhaps I’m being a bit harsh on Twitter. But I really don’t see how it can keep up it’s stamina? Sooner or later, it’s going to loose steam right? After all, not everyone can keep up with everyone to that degree all the time and still make actual useful contributions to mankind…can they? Heck, I have enough trouble keeping up with my MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts!

Here’s how I see Twitter succeeding: in the business world. While people can really care less what their best friend ate for lunch today, they might really care what lunch specials their favorite restaurant is having. And while they might ignore that their little brother just beat Grand Theft Auto 4, they might really want to know that Best Buy is putting the game on sale for the next 12 hours for 50% off (that would REALLY be worth "tweeting" about don’t you think?).

If that’s the future of Twitter, sign me up. Otherwise, count me out.

Do you think businesses will be Twitter’s savior or am I completely off my rocker?

Allow me to illustrate using a brand new business networking technique called "workstreaming." You’ve heard of blogging as a means of keeping customers, clients and visitors up to date on different goings on, and perhaps you’ve also heard of micro-blogging tools such as Twitter. Workstreaming combines these tools to give people INSTANT instant access to what you are doing. Web Worker Daily describes it as:

"the publishing of work-related activities and events to your remote colleagues, usually via RSS but sometimes in other formats and ways.”

Another description from the AnyWired blog :

"A workstream is a live updated record of work you’ve completed. When doing group work with remote colleagues, it allows you to keep track of what everyone else is doing. When working solo, it helps you keep track of your own productivity."

Now, if you’re using it in the context of keeping co-workers up to date on accomplishments on a group project, fine. But otherwise, it begs the question: Who cares?

What do you think?

When you’ve already got plenty of virtual responsibilites (email, blog, myspace and/or facebook pages, etc) do you want to tie yourself down to posting up to the minute tidbits? And do you think there are enough people out there that would read them enough to make it worth your while? What about if you did this strictly for your business website involving store promotions, job openings…..?

Talk to me. Tell me how this is productive.