Twitter has quickly become the best choice for creating short blogs. People often use microblogging to drive traffic to Web sites or to promote products and services. But users have begun adapting it for a variety of other tasks.

Twitter may be your best route to the people who can help. At the same time, a company can gauge what customers are saying about it and prevent small problems from becoming big ones.

Zappos, an online shoe store, encourages its employees to use Twitter. The company set up its own Twitter site to capture every tweet that mentions it. Customers really like feeling more personally connected, this is a way to develop a deeper relationship with them.