Hard to believe Twitter is turning just six years old today. It seems like it’s been around forever.

The tributes and retrospectives are popping up all across the Internet.

You could argue Jack Dorsey‘s first tweet is the 21st century’s “Mr. Watson — come here”, the birth of a communication revolution.

How did we ever follow news and, more importantly, celebrities before Twitter?

It’s also given consumers of news a fascinating look, in real time, as to how the sausage is made.

Six years is forever in the tech world, which makes you wonder: What’ll be the next big thing in social media? What is the next Twitter?

I don’t know, but this 140-characters-or-less limit is pretty constricting.

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A couple interesting uses of Twitter I’ve heard about the last two days:

First, we’re on the cusp of movie award season, when distinguished film critics bestow prizes on films 94 percent of the country has not seen. The New York Film Critics Circle announced their awards via its Twitter feed yesterday. The results were tweeted out soon after the critics voted. (Ironically, they were sitting at a square table.)

Moving on to the world of fruit. While we went about our daily lives the last few months, a high-stakes battle to become headquarters of banana company Chiquita was being waged between longtime home Cincinnati and Charlotte. In the battle of Queen cities, Charlotte won out. (Miss Chiquita could not be reached for comment.)

As the official wooing was going on, people in both cities took to Twitter to try to persuade the company. Cincinnatians created the hashtag #NoCincyBananaSplit, while Charlotte countered with #BananasForCLT. Elizabeth Flock of The Washington Post provided an excellent summary of the Twitter chatter.

What’s most notable to me is how active and involved Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre was on Twitter both during the decision-making process. If you check out his Twitter feed today, you can see how cordial all sides have been since the move to Charlotte was announced.

Just goes to show Twitter has appeal.

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They’re all featured in this blog post, thanks to a variety of interesting business news developments Tuesday.

Nonprofit employment grew 2 percent in 2009, compared to a statewide drop in total employment of 3.2 percent, according to “Nonprofits by the Numbers,” an annual report published by Maryland Nonprofits, a trade group that advocates for nonprofit organizations.

Over the period from 2004-2009, nonprofit employment grew by 9.5 percent while total employment shrank 2.1 percent, according to the report. Nonprofits in Maryland employ 255,408 people or 10.6 percent of the state’s work force, and account for 10 percent of all wages paid statewide, up from 9.5 percent of the work force and 8.6 percent of wages in 2004.

Click here if you’d like to see the report.

Meanwhile, just in time for Easter, Just Born Inc., a Bethlehem, Pa.-based confectionary company that makes the yellow, pink, lavender, blue and white chick- and bunny-shaped marshmallow candy called Peeps, has launched an online store, www.peepsandcompany.com.

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the “art” of posting to Facebook and Twitter, from the perspective of an organization that is trying to reach out and share information with readers, users or consumers.

At The Daily Record, we blast out breaking news posts on Facebook and Twitter, as well as other news we hope readers will find interesting enough to click on and engage with.

But every once in a while, we also use our social media sites to send out a marketing message or two, such as:

“Purchase tickets for the 2011 Health Care Heroes Breakfast on March 23 at the Hyatt Regency Inner Harbor. More info: http://bit.ly/dEZ7ef”

This is necessary, because we have to promote our events and our paid subscription options through different media in order to reach as much of our audience as possible. But at the same time, we know that most of our Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers did not sign up for promotions. They signed up to receive semi-frequent news updates.

The downside to this double-edged sword is the ease with which a user can “unlike” or “unfollow” your page.

On Jay Baer’s “Convince & Convert” social media blog, he recently wrote a post called “Why You’re Pissing Off Half Your Facebook Fans.” He reports the findings of new research on why consumers “turn their backs on social and e-mail connections with brands.”

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One of the better features offered by social media giant Facebook is the ability to “hide” a person or page from your news feed, effectively preventing you from having to see updates that don’t interest you.

This way, you don’t have to rudely “unfriend” someone, but you can politely ignore them (without them ever knowing).

Of the 500-some friends I have accumulated on Facebook in the past six years, I would estimate that 300 or more of them have been hidden from my feed, leaving more room for updates that I am interested in.

Social media entrepreneur Peter Shankman recently posted his “Top 10 Things That Get You Unfollowed/Unfriended” (unfollowed being a reference to Twitter).

Some of Shankman’s tips are incredibly accurate, such as number nine:

9) Play any game on Facebook that requires you to post on my wall that you need “coins” “vegetables” “guns” or anything similar.

And number two:

2) Ignore the basics. Please. “At the store. Buying a latte. Doing my laundry. Looking at a dog.” OK, really? We get it.

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Years from now, when people look back at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, I think naming him Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” will seem like an understated honor.

Often when my eyes glaze over my Facebook news feed, I think about how many people are active users. As of the end of this year, more than about one out of every 12 people on the planet use the social network (about 550 million users out of the world’s approximate 6.8 billion). When you factor in that the world population includes those too young or too old to use Facebook, and millions of others who are not fortunate enough to have regular Internet access, the number is even more staggering.

Very few inventions and innovations — if any at all — have both affected so many people on a global scale, and can be traced back to one individual.

It may seem odd now, but skip forward 100 years, and I’d suggest Zuckerberg’s influence in the 21st century will be comparable to the impact Thomas Edison and his light bulb had on the 20th. Edison didn’t invent electricity, he revolutionized it; Zuckerberg didn’t invent the Internet, but he made it something that most of us can’t live without (me included).

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I attended a Memorial Day parade with my family Saturday morning. My high school’s marching band made an appearance, which brought back a flood of memories. So I documented it the way I often do with these sorts of things, by uploading a picture and caption to my Facebook page.

Within minutes I was reminded of candy sales held 25 years ago to raise money to buy new uniforms, as well as a long-forgotten crack in a Sousaphone bell and how it got there. Old friends in other states were reminiscing with me, practically in real time, about things my memory had misplaced. It was another testament to the power of Facebook, the way the social networking platform bridges vast distances of time and place and powerfully connects people.

Coming as it did within days of Facebook announcing changes to its privacy policies, however, my warm remembrance also had a healthy streak of cynicism running through it.

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Baltimore Deputy Mayor Andrew Frank got back to me via e-mail after my deadline for today’s Google fiber network story. I wanted to pass along his insights because they underscore a point the Baltimore technology leaders went to great lengths yesterday to make: Baltimore’s success in getting picked by Google as a test market for its ultra-fast broadband network will hinge greatly on the city’s ability to make the best municipal case possible for the selection.

The grassroots support, while creative and vocal, needs to be just that — support.

“They have to see in the application that this is a multi-pronged approach,” Mario Armstrong told me. “How do we extend this beyond, here are some techies who think this would be great for the city. … [Google] is really concerned with what are going to be the roadblocks to implementation?”

Here’s what Frank, who oversees neighborhood and economic development for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, wrote:

“We are always looking for opportunities to distinguish Baltimore City from its competition. We need to find new and build on existing strengths that retain and attract residents and businesses. The Google high-speed Internet opportunity would achieve those goals, appealing both to residents and businesses. Also, as a technology gadget aficionado, the Mayor gets that having access to the latest technology can influence the choices that residents and businesses make.”

That last point was echoed by Tom Loveland, CEO of Mind Over Machines, a software company that’s thrown its support behind the push. When he and his like-minded high-tech brethren scout neighborhoods for homes to buy, Loveland said one of the first things they research is the “high-speed footprint.”

Meanwhile, here are some of the ways other cities are positioning themselves to grab Google’s attention:

• Washington, D.C.’s CTO is pitching the District’s own fiber network, one that connects schools, libraries and city office buildings, as a “middle mile” loop of fiber lines that would make it easier to bring 1 gigabit-per-second fiber to the doorsteps of residents.
• St. Louis is in the process of “completing a very competitive application,” the mayor’s press secretary tells the Riverfront Times in a Twitter direct message.
• The city council in Palo Alto, Calif., has voted to scrap its bid for federal stimulus funding to devote all its energy to hooking Google as the source for a city-wide high-speed Web network.

What do you think Baltimore should do to catch Google’s eye? Let us know in the comments. The deadline for applications is March 26, so stay tuned.

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Ah, the steady hum of a Bobcat loader, the beep-beep-beep of a snowplow — music to my ears and all audible outside my house Tuesday afternoon as tireless Howard County road crews finally freed my 100-townhome community from another day of being trapped by three feet of snow.

Other than walking, residents had no way in or out, and we were getting anxious. “Serious ‘Lord of the Flies’ potential here,” I tweeted Monday night.

Using Twitter was just one way I stayed connected to the outside world in between shoveling shifts and trying to help my wife think of new ways to keep three small children occupied while snowbound. When Snowmageddon 2010 is all said and done, it will have taught me many things, such as the need to overstock on my favorite domestic lager when a 90 percent chance of “paralyzing” snowfall is in the forecast. But what will really stay with me is how indispensable Internet technology and social media have become in business and everyday life.

Twitter and Facebook weren’t around in the President’s Day storm of 2003. High-speed and wireless Web access weren’t even commonplace at the time. But since Friday night I’ve received a steady stream of Twitter updates from @kenulman — Howard County Executive Ken Ulman — on the progress of county road crews and efforts being made locally and across the state to weather the storm. When the county’s snowplow tracker Web site was down for a time Monday, Ulman tweeted it.

He wasn’t alone. Information on school closings, power outages, traffic accidents, transit service schedules and anything having to do with #mdsnow was shared by @insidecharmcity, @constellationeg and a host of others.

More than the raw flow of information, though, was the ability to connect in misery with others, and to try and laugh about it and keep things in perspective.

My Facebook friends in Northern Virginia posted a steady stream of updates Saturday from their mobile devices as they grappled with losing power to their increasingly cold homes — and that snapped me out of my streak of self-pity pretty quick.

“Can see his breath inside his house, not good” from one friend was followed an hour later by “just watched a guy get stuck on our street in a little, non-four wheel drive car. Grabbed a shovel, and headed out, trying to decide whether to dig him out or hit him with the shovel.”

So how about you: Did your friends across the country send online well wishes and notes of thanks for posting pictures on Facebook? Did Google Chat come in handy for those of you forced to work remotely? Or did you find the Web and its platforms providing too much information, to the point where it sparked more anxiety than comfort?

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Or, rather, what public relations folks call “getting your constituency to work for you.” I attended a discussion this morning hosted by the Public Relations Society of America on how marketers are using social networking to promote tourism and the overlying theme was how to make a promotion worth way more than was actually spent on it.

The issue was especially on point as the Maryland Office of Tourism has seen funding cuts over the last few years and agencies say more clients are coming to them asking about how make their dollars go further using social networking.

But, as Tom Rowe of Visit Baltimore put it, ” There’s no such thing as viral content. There’s content and then you cross your fingers.”

So that means you have to come up with a specific idea about your product before you start blasting the Internet with tweets, YouTube videos and Facebook posts about that product, marketers said. (Also on the panel was David Warschawski of Warschawski PR and Margot Amelia of the state tourism office with the Department of Business and Economic Development.)

For example, Warschawski said Visit Norway approached his firm about getting more recognition in the United States. He said they came up with a campaign after doing research that showed how much time Americans spend indoors and dubbed it “Passport to friluftsliv” (pronounced FREE-luft-sleeve). Friluftsliv is a Norwegian word for “open air living.”

The campaign highlighted the country’s outdoor activities, which landed coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Reuters and a feature in the New York Times. All told, Visit Norway has or is scheduled to receive more than 200 million media impressions.

Amelia noted that with the smaller state appropriation, the state office of tourism has upped its  media efforts, and last fiscal year (which ended June 30) the office increased its media placement by 54 percent, a $6.6 million value.

The media placements and campaigns, such as a Maryland Treasures photo contest open to the public (click here to vote for one of the finalists), not only get the product name recognition but get the public involved. And when the people are talking about your product, that’s all sorts of unpaid for advertising (also known as word of mouth).

So, long story short, I’m basically playing right into their hands with this post about tourism marketing and products. But that’s OK — because when you make the subject interesting, its worth spreading the word.

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