Chris Brogan’s 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business is an excellent resource for anyone getting started with Twitter or micro-blogging in general. Chris breaks the 50 ideas down into several sections:

• First Steps
• Ideas About WHAT to Tweet
• Some Sanity for You
• Some Negatives People Will Throw At You
• Some Positives to Throw Back

Overall there are very solid tips and practical advice. Even if you’re already using Twitter in your business, check out Chris’ post–you’ll probably learn something new.

Twitter has published an introductory guide targeted specifically at businesses. Twitter 101 for Businesses is an excellent and in-depth guide for anyone interested in learning more about how to effectively use Twitter to engage with customers, potential customers, and even other industry leaders.

If you’re new to Twitter, I’d strongly recommend reading Twitter 101 for Businesses before you make your first post. There’s a wealth of information and sound advice.

There’s also a downloadable PDF slideshow that’s perfect for a short presentation, or a printable guide if you want to take it with you.

Micro-blogging (or microblogging) is a type of blogging that restricts posts to a shorter length. It typically also offers more community features as well, such as a timeline of your friends’ posts and the ability to tag friends in your post. Twitter is the most popular micro-blogging service.

Why are micro-blogging services relevant? In this fast-paced world, micro-blogging gives friends and colleagues a way to keep in touch with each other and industry news. Twitter launched in July of 2006 but didn’t gain widespread popularity until the SXSW Conference in March of 2007, where it was used extensively as a way to keep up with panels, keynotes and parties.

How does Micro-Blogging Work?

Micro-blogging works much like blogging. You write posts, which are shown in chronological order. The difference being that your posts and all of your friends posts are intermixed and you can see a timeline of what everyone you “follow” is up to.

In addition to seeing the posts in a timeline on the micro-blog, posts can be sent to your mobile phone as a text message. You can also reply with a text message, posting back to your micro-blog.

Most services also include an extensive API allowing developers to further extend the service, by creating desktop clients and other web services.

Micro-Blogging Services

Twitter

The biggest and oldest micro-blogging service, Twitter has had problems scaling as it’s grown in popularity. Registering hours and hours of downtime some months, Twitter’s engineers are trying desperately to scale the service quick enough.

A lot of users are frustrated, however, and are investigating other services.

Pownce

Founded by Leah Culver and Kevin Rose of Digg, Pownce adds a few features to the simplistic Twitter model. You can post different types of content, such as a status update, event, link, file, etc.

Jaiku

Acquired by Google, Jaiku is currently in private beta but is gaining in popularity as many believe Google’s backing might mean it’s the only serious competitor to Twitter.

Plurk

A relative newcomer, Plurk’s features are very similar to Twitter and Pownce but it’s difference is the way it displays your timeline. Plurk shows you an actual timeline of you and your friends’ posts.

Facebook

Facebook is much more than a micro-blogging service, obviously. Facebook’s “current status” feature works much like a micro-blogging service and does include a timeline, which is why I’m including it in the list.

Why You Should Use Micro-Blogging

Micro-blogging can be an excellent way to disseminate short bursts of information, such as a new product that launched or an event that’s coming up. Many popular bloggers like Robert Scoble, Jeffrey Zeldman, Darren Rowse and Gary Vaynerchuk have embraced micro-blogging as a way to communicate and keep in touch. Tony Hseih, CEO of the billion-dollar Zappos, Inc. uses Twitter several times a day.

Micro-blogging will get more and more popular as the mainstream Internet catches on. It’s still in its infancy, which also makes the best time to embrace it and sign up for a micro-blogging service.