  The rapid diffusion of "microblogging" services such as Twitter is ushering
in a new era of possibilities for organizations to communicate with and engage
their core stakeholders and the general public. To enhance understanding of the
communicative functions microblogging serves for organizations, this study
examines the Twitter utilization practices of the 100 largest nonprofit
organizations in the United States. The analysis reveals there are three key
functions of microblogging updates-"information," "community," and "action."
Though the informational use of microblogging is extensive, nonprofit
organizations are better at using Twitter to strategically engage their
stakeholders via dialogic and community-building practices than they have been
with traditional websites. The adoption of social media appears to have
engendered new paradigms of public engagement.
  Keywords: microblogging; Twitter; social media; stakeholder relations;
organizational communication; organization-public relations; nonprofit
organizations
