Admit it. Even after reading the title of this post you have no idea what it is about. And I know you didn't learn about Twitter on Compliance Week because I just got a big fat zero for my search result when searching for "Twitter" in the Compliance Week search box.

So... "Twittering?" Is that a compliment or criticism? Neither, technically, but a compliment in my opinion because Twitter is one of the fastest growing and most popular "Web 2.0" services and is becoming an important way that people and, well, securities regulators communicate with the rest of the world. Specifically, as defined by Wikipedia, Twitter is a "free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length."

OK, so maybe you're still not really grasping the concept. Believe me, I was right there with you until a week or two ago, when I learned that the SEC's Office of Investor Education had begun posting SEC enforcement-related updates on Twitter. To see this for yourself, visit the SEC's Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/SEC_Investor_Ed or just click here. I decided that if the SEC was on Twitter, that (a) I wanted to follow what it was posting there, and (b) I wanted to get a Twitter feed of my own to see what uses it could be put to (the Twitter feed for my publication, Securities Docket, is at http://twitter.com/SecuritiesD or just click here).

I believe the SEC should be commended for being ahead of the curve in getting on to Twitter. It is an extremely quick and easy way (140 characters just can't take that long) to get a message out to an audience of potentially millions of people that grows daily. Thus far, the SEC appears to use Twitter as another way to get out press releases and litigation releases, but also for unique uses such as "live" updates from their recent SEC Seniors Summit. I'm quite confident that other agencies and government bodies will soon follow suit if they have not already.