ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Well, now to if not an Internet language and Internet writing style, the style of Twitter - getting your point across in 140 characters takes some skill. And David Gorn has this story on particularly skilled tweeters who've used their talents to find work in the rough economy.
DAVID GORN: Jen McCabe says she got her current job in San Francisco through being an avid tweeter.
Ms. JEN MCCABE: I absolutely would not be where I am today without the following and support of the people that I meet on Twitter.
GORN: In fact, she's been called the queen of Twitter among her health care colleagues. McCabe used it to become an expert in a niche field inside the health care industry and would tweet updates from conferences, comment on breaking news. Powerful people in that niche field started to notice her and follow what she had to say.
Ms. MCCABE: Twitter is a meritocracy. You are known for what you tweet. If you come across as a smart, hard-working person, people are going to pay attention.
GORN: That's one way to get a job. The other way to use Twitter and other networks like Pownce and Jaiku is to simply network. These sites used to be mostly used by youngsters but life on Twitter has changed. A significant percentage of users now are 30 and older, and they're using Twitter to find jobs. That's according to Josh Bernoff of the Forrester Group, a technology research firm.
Mr. JOSH BERNOFF (Forrester Group): The thing that makes a difference for people looking for jobs is the ability to retweet.
GORN: That's when people pass along your tweet to other people in a different network. Bernoff says it's a cyber-extension of the adage: It's not what you know, it's who you know.
Mr. BERNOFF: That creates a real echo effect for people who've got friends that have a lot of friends.
GORN: Rich Trombetta has another idea. He co-founded a site called tweetmyjobs.com.
Mr. RICH TROMBETTA (Co-Founder, Tweetmyjobs.com): We connect job seekers and job posters instantaneously via Twitter. We take the noise out of the Twittersphere.
GORN: The idea is there may be dozens of companies you want to follow on Twitter, but if you get every piece of info those companies tweet out, you could be swamped. So Trombetta filters out only the job-related info and sends those out as alerts. Microblogs, he says, are not just for fun anymore.
Mr. TROMBETTA: You're going to start to see that perception change as more and more businesses realize that, this could be the most powerful tool since email.
GORN: So if you're job hunting, it's not who you know, or even what you know, but how you type it - 140 characters at a time.
For NPR News, I'm David Gorn.
SIEGEL: And for more tech news you can always go to the All Tech Considered blog, that's at npr.org/alltech.
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