Spun Digital - Finding customers online

Popular microblogging site Twitter has altered its update message from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?"

The rewording and simplification reflects the ascendancy of opinion or event-based comments over the previously dominant 'life casting'.

In an official blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone noted that organisations and individuals had appeared to ignore the original message and had all, for some time, been writing posts as though in response to the query "What's happening".

Speaking about how Twitter is being used, Mr Stone said: "People are using the tool to organise genuine meetings, to organise tweetups, to organise protests."

"A million times a second, every single day - people are making new connections, because they're communicating," he added.

The recent announcement that Google and Bing will incorporate social media content such as tweets into search results makes it even more important for brands to make the most of the online marketplace, according to Robert Proctor from social networking software provider Reality Digital.

"Reputation management in the online public sphere needs to be at the top of any brands priorities, certainly as we go into 2010," said Mr Proctor.