Andy Hilton Opinion piece December 3 Daily Post LDP Creative

Since Twitter launched back in March 2006, IT gurus from around the globe have continued to describe it as 'the world's most powerful marketing tool, 'revolutionary' and even, 'the future of the world wide web'.

For me, I see Twitter as something used extensively by people on a 'personal' level and something that is not of direct benefit to businesses. Instead of finding out snippets about people's lives, like what your friends did at the weekend, local companies need collaboration at an enterprise level, which will save them both time and money whilst increasing productivity and creativity.

Here at IT support company IT Answers, we have started introducing our clients to a range of specific business-led microblogging and collaboration services as - wait for it- an alternative to Twitter.

Most of these collaboration services are free for anyone to use, with charges only being applied for extensions on specific facilities. Unlike Twitter, micro-blogging sites such as Yammer and Presently purposely set out to focus on businesses, and only individuals with the same email domain can join a given network.

Other services like DimDim, Evernote and drop.io better suit some organisations' needs for collaboration as they offer additional features such as online meeting facilities and information synchronisation across various devices including iPhones.

At present, we offer a range of IT services which includes IT Support and Consultancy services to more than 150 companies in total at the moment, but if there are additional opportunities that are available for clients, which packages like these are, it would be wrong not to suggest them as the potential benefits are endless.

With DimDim for example, employers are able to have meetings with up to 20 members of staff via their computers wherever they are around the world, share each other's desktops and have free voice calls, similar to Skype, on a daily basis.

Twitter was never meant for businesses and the people behind it are now trying to shape it into that. Technology is growing at a rapid speed and the market is ever changing, so people are already predicting what will be the next big thing.