When someone mentions Twitter, what flashes across your mind? The word “Twitter” in blue or the cute blue bird? Which is the official logo for Twitter? This goes again, the word or the bird? Well, the official logo for Twitter is the word “Twitter” (in blue). It is not surprising if you choose the cute little blue bird as this bird has overwhelmed Twitter’s official logo.

So, who designed this blue bird? Is it from one of Twitter’s designers? No. The creator, designer of this little bird is Simon Oxley. Never heard of this person? Not surprising. Twitter never talks about him. Simon Oxley is a talented illustrator. His designs are often simple, without any bombastic colors. Yet, they are very appealing, funny and with a sense of originality. Simon Oxley grew up in England and liked drawing since young. He is 40 years old now. Currently, he is based in Japan with his wife, Noriko. They have 2 boys who are at a very young age; Tyler and Hagen. He used to work for Harajuku. However, he is a freelancer now, still contributing to iStockphoto.

Why the word “still” contributing to iStockphoto is used? Well, iStockphoto was where Twitter purchased Simon’s little bird at a “stunning” price of about $7. This innocent bird is never meant to be Twitter’s logo, not now, not in the future. It flew into Twitter simply as a decorative element on the website. Thus, it is all legal for Twitter to use it. This blue bird is just too cute; it took the spotlight away from Twitter’s official logo accidentally.

Are you still curious about Simon? How and where did he get his inspiration to come up with such a cute bird? According to Simon in an interview, he, himself is not sure. He cannot even remember why he drew the bird. He only remembers he was uploading tones of images to iStockphoto at that moment. Well, guess he is just simply talented.

Now that this blue bird is a worldwide icon, Twitter’s mascot, yet, he is not given any credits from Twitter. Does he hold any grudges or hard feelings towards Twitter? Amazingly, his answer is, no. In fact, Simon is happy that Twitter had chosen his design. He understands that Twitter is not obligated to do so. He is proud of what Twitter is doing, enabling people from all around the world to communicate and to share information in a better way.

According to Simon, on 21st June, an article about him and the Twitter bird will be published on Washington Post. Wired.com had also mentioned about him. All these are great promotions. He is satisfied, chirping like a bird. His dream is not to be a millionaire but simply to be able to fund his family to travel around, to many places, to broaden theirs and his mind. He wants to buy a house too, whereby they can grow their own vegetables. These are such simple, achievable dreams. Guess these promotions will give him a helping hand to realize his dreams.

In conclusion, let’s give this talented, down to earth illustrator a big round of applause. Now that you know the bird is just a decorative bird, please remember Twitter’s official logo, “Twitter” in blue words and not any animals.

Twitter is the phenomenon in town. Britney Spears is on Twitter, Lady Gaga is on Twitter, Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger are on Twitter. Even Barack Obama is on Twitter. So, what milestone? What is new? Well, another President! The President from Russia, the 44 years old, Dmitry Medvedev. President Medvedev visited the headquarters of Twitter this June and posted his first tweet.

You may ask, so what is the big deal? It is just another visit from some high profile individual. Well, it is more than that. It was the day, the day where Twitter has proven its international presence and importance. Twitter has gained its worldwide recognition and reputation with only about 200 talented employees. Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s founders was glad and honored. He stated, “We are small but we have a global mindset. With such a busy schedule, it was astonishingly generous for the President to stop by.” You may visit Biz’s side, under the subject “From Russia with Love” to read it yourself.

So, what happened on that significant day? According to a blogger, MG Siegler, he had to go through a security check much more compelling than any other airports in the world. Snipers were in sight. Any silly move and it will cost you your life. No joke. Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder got the ball rolling by acknowledging it was indeed a historic day for Twitter. The President then took the stage and sent his very first tweet in Russian. It said “”Hello everyone! I’m on Twitter, and this is my first tweet.” Within minutes, President Medvedev had 1,500 followers and the numbers kept growing. Fast but as expected. The crowd was humongous to the extend Williams soon noticed no one was working! Everyone was excited. Well, they should be. It was not only an honor but an acknowledgement to their hard work.

President Medvedev sent not only 1, but a total of 14 tweets. Guess who responded to Medvedev’s first tweet? President Obama himself. He welcomed the Russian president in his tweet. Besides President Obama, “The Terminator”, current Californian Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger responded to President Medvedev’s tweet as well. According to news on Channel 4 on 24 June, the Russian president had 24,000 followers in Tweeter’s Russian version while 18,000 in the English version to date. It is a good sign indeed. In his tweets, President Medvedev recognizes Silicon Valley’s value and its greatest asset. This type of environment would be great for Russia. He even took some time to meet up with native Russians who are currently working in Silicon Valley. According to President Medvedev, Russia has the money but does not have a Silicon Valley.

Twitter going global or in other words, internalization, kicked off by Matt Sanford, Yoshi Niwa and Sean Bell. Matt Sanford is the lead engineer, responsible in both international strategy and engineering. He used to work for Disney, AOL and Summize. So far, Twitter has localized its interface, catering to 5 markets. Unicode supports Twitter with its translation service. This remarkable event had indeed made everyone’s effort worthwhile.

Do you know if Twitter were a country, it would be the world 12th largest country in terms of population? According to Wikipedia, as a start, Twitter had 500,000 tweets per quarter. In 2008, the tweets grew to 100 million per quarter. This carried on to 2 billion tweets, mind you; it is billion, not million anymore, by 2009. In March 2010, there was a 1,500% increase in the number of registered Twitter users. By now, 65 million tweets are hitting the web each day, meaning there are a number of 750 tweets sent per second! Just imagine the number of fingers typing per second. It will surely make you giddy.

So, what makes Twitter grow so fast and remain strong? It is hard to pin point down to 1 reason as there are many and most of the time, interlinked. Simplicity is 1 reason for sure. Try Google “How to use Twitter”. You will be amazed how helpful people are today, the bright side of humanity, to the extent you might yell “Enough! Information overload!” Yes, joining Twitter and start tweeting is really as easy as a piece of cake. Go to Twitter’s website and click “Join for Free”. Follow the steps and you are done. In fact, some call it a complete no-brainer. You do not have to be tech-savvy to use it.

Besides simplicity, you get to “follow” your favorite celebrities on Twitter! Not as a paparazzi, of course. How often do you get to text your favorite celebrities? How often do you get to hear from them, themselves, and not from any reliable, non-reliable sources? How often do you get to know what is playing on their minds at a particular moment? Well, Twitter offers you this opportunity, to get close, to get to know, to connect with your favorites. You do not even have to pay a cent for these! According to The Sunday Times, the top 50 celebrities are Stephen Fry, a comedian; Britney Spears, John Cleese, MC Hammer, Demi Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Smith, Lady Gaga and the list goes on. Thus, you actually have a whole “gallery” of celebrities to choose from. In fact, it was said that Jennifer Anniston dumped John Mayer because he paid more attention to Twitter and not to her. What a poor guy…

Thirst for the latest news updates? Was in a rush, not in time to grab the papers? Well, you always have Twitter. Twitter can be accessed via computers and mobile phones. Unless you are still living in the Stone Age, everyone has a mobile phone nowadays. So, how does Twitter, a microblogging, social networking platform could act as a news channel for you? Well, BBC, CNN and some other News providers have joined Twitter. They tweet news bulletins. Besides News providers, you can also skip all traditional news reporting by getting ground breaking news from primary sources, example, eyewitnesses themselves.

Besides all above, to remain popular, you have to be at the top of mind of your users all the time. Twitter does have a cute and simple icon which is easy to remember – the blue bird. In fact, some Twitterholics got so attracted to this bird, they started creating their own galleries of blue birds, free for all to download. The Overload Shark icon is cute too! It will appear when the server gets congested, saying “Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.” It somehow has a funny effect, getting you less frustrated. No matter how old you are, everyone has an inner child. Guess, Twitter has managed to capture the little kid in us.

You may be wondering what this got to do with Twitter? Well, Twitter just created a new account for itself, @EarlyBird. Seems like bird, birds are associated with Twitter. Thanks to the cute little blue bird created by Simon Oxley.

So, what does this account do? Selling birds? Selling, promoting, yes. Birds, no! Followers of @EarlyBird will be able to enjoy sneak peaks, events, exclusive deals and special promotions by Twitter’s partners and other businesses. Twitter is not the boss here. Its advertising partners and businesses are the ones who will determine the terms and conditions, amount, prices and availability of the promotions @EarlyBird. No worries, Twitterholics. Twitter promises to have the best of your interests in mind. According to Twitter, this new account is well received. Within days, even before the bird starts singing, @EarlyBird already has thousands of little birdies following it.

The poor victim of Twitter’s @EarlyBird’s overwhelming response is Twitter’s help desk itself. It actually started a Q&A page, answering frequently asked questions. According to the help desk, this account is alike all other accounts. It is solely up to you to follow or unfollow. Retweets of this account will also look like any other retweets. So, what is the catch? It is simple. As the saying goes, early birds, get the worm! In other words, the deals or offers are supply-sensitive and time-sensitive.

Where and how did Twitter get the idea to create this account? Well, Twitter is well aware of the many businesses using it as a platform to communicate with their potential or existing consumers by providing timely information about product launches and deals. In fact, Dell was reported to have achieved $6.5million in sales via its Twitter account. If Dell can do so, why not Twitter?

Now, which was the very first song sang by the bird? It sang a song from Walt Disney Studios, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. Followers were entitled to get 2 tickets of the movie at the price of one. Not a bad start, targeting at one of the many summer movies. So, you only get movie deals from @EarlyBird? Of course not, dear Twitterholics. According to Matt Graves, Twitter’s PR guy, the face of Twitter, “This is just a start. Our bird had just taken its virgin flight. Advertisers are interested in our little bird, providing us the luxury to be picky and nosey. As promised, we keep our users’ interests in mind. We are selecting offers with products many love and dream to have, but seldom enjoy great deals from them. We have great deals lining up and this is for sure.”

By end of July, Twitter will unveil more about @EarlyBird. According to Carolyn Penner, Twitter’s spokesperson, “@EarlyBird is not an overnight bird. To find out what are in store, keep waking up early and be the first to know!” Exactly how early do you need to wake up? Well, too bad, the answer is not available. However, you can choose to stay glued to your computer all night long. Good luck, Twitterholics!

“I will follow you, follow you wherever you may go, there isn’t an ocean too deep; a mountain so high it can keep me away…” Yes, the “follow” button is the magic button for you to build your presence on Twitter for whatever purposes. However, before we go in-depth into how exactly you can build you presence, let’s talk about why you should do it and how you can benefit from it.

One of the many benefits building your presence on Twitter is to enable you to land yourself on your dream job. Reason being, there are so many people, so many companies tweeting on Twitter. In no time, you might be finding yourself “following” your dream company, your mentor, someone whom you have looked up to for a long time. You might even be tweeting with CEOs, hiring managers, top-level executives, hiring firms etc. With the limited 140 characters per tweet, come up with a “Twit-Pitch” to impress you potential employers. Remember less is more difficult than more. Do not have enough confidence to do so? No worries, in May 2010, TwitJobSearch had linked Skype with Twitter. You might get a job interview within 30 seconds. No joke. You can now talk, not just type.

Besides getting the right job, the sky is the limit for businesses to grow via their professional presence on Twitter. The large pool of users on Twitter provides your company the luxury to fish your potential clients or consumers. Need some evidence? Well, Dell was reported to have gained $6.5 million in sales via its Twitter account by customizing deals catering exclusively to Twitter’s users.

Now, for job seekers, how to build your presence on Twitter? First things first, make an “employer-friendly” presence. You might be desperate but just hold your horses back, do not be too aggressive. Get your thinking cap on and come up with a catchy, creative bio within 160 words. Personalize your background. Make it looks professional. There are ample resources of background designs on the web. Done with your background? Now, link your online resume. Last but not least, be yourself! Buck up and be confident! Every individual is unique and has his or her very own selling point.

As for businesses, create a legitimate profile. There are too many overnight, bogus companies on the web. Link your company’s website to your Twitter account. Maximize the usage of your company’s logo. Use it as your avatar at your page as well as your background. Build consumer confidence in your company by locating someone they can talk to, someone who can answer their questions. Please do not use a bot. If you are the CEO or a senior officer in your company, you may tweet as well. This will enhances your company’s presence on Twitter furthermore. People will feel privileged being able to talk to someone who really knows-how and is more credible than a customer service officer. Lastly, protect your customers’ information! This is very important. Any leakage or abuse of this information and all your hard work will go down the drain. This is not a treat but a fact.