Shel Holtz, Communicator

Twitter, a micro-communication service that gives users an opportunity to express their thoughts in 140-character "tweets," is a hit in the social media world. Companies are also benefiting from Twitter, where 20 percent of the tweets contain requests for product information or responses to the requests, according to Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State.

"People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services," said Jansen. "Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services."

Jansen, along with IST doctoral student Mimi Zhang, undergraduate student Kate Sobel and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury, investigated micro-communicating as an electronic word-of-mouth medium, using Twitter as the platform. Their results were published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences and Technology.

The researchers examined half a million tweets during the study. The team looked for tweets mentioning a brand and why the brand was mentioned -- to inform others, express a view on the brand or something else -- and found that people were using tweets to connect with the products.

There is a trend when it comes to micro-communication and what it is used for, according to Jansen.

"Businesses use micro-communication for brand awareness, brand knowledge and customer relationship," he said. "Personal use is all over the board."

I didn't see a breakout of the number of tweets that were questions vs. the number that were responses. It would also be useful to know how many responses came from other consumers and how many from representatives of the brand.

In any case, this research suggests that brand engagement on Twitter is a worthwhile activity that will undoubtedly become more important as the Twitter population continues to grow.