Is Twitter really useful?

Something new is happening on Twitter this very moment. Is it good for business?

Do I really need to see it?

The brilliance of Twitter is its simplicity, but also its greatest drawback. Just logging into Twitter exposes you to hundreds of new postings, and as you scroll down to see what was posted '6 minutes ago' there is even more. Its fun. Its exciting. Its beyond the MTV generation (when attention spans shortened).

Can it work for business?

Two great applications that I have seen are HootSuite and CoTweet.

HootSuite
HootSuite is public and free, and ready to go. For a company's Twitter manager it will your company an overview of everyone who is doing corporate Twitters (support, marketing (staff) etc). You can see all the conversations from one dashboard view.

You can also manage the Tweets by writing them and setting a time for when they should be launched. This is great for marketing campaigns.

The exciting part is the admin side. HootSuite allows you to add more editors and accounts. This means that once the Twitter accounts are in HootSuite, several people can simultaneously Tweet from several Twitter accounts.

This is good for pushing the conversation in Twitter and monitoring how it develops. Still for the newshound and market researcher, it doesn't have a management mechanism for handling an abundant load of friends.

CoTweet
CoTweet is still in private Beta but sounds like it will be the next 'must have' business desktop application. Some leading companies are trying it out and initial feedback sounds promising. Check out the testimonial from MailChimp.
MailChimp summed up the common Twitter experience where Power Twitter users (Pwitters?) are communicating with customers on many levels and trying to keep track of the whole entereprise on notebooks and post-its (so to speak).
CoTweet reigns in the chaos with accepted enterprise management tools like ticketing and a database of searchable information. It provides tracking information and a very smooth professional interface.

To sum it up from MailChimp:
"CoTweet can help you manage your brand and manage the customer service experience (ahem, protocol), but still let your staff contribute to your social media efforts in a personal, human way."