Entrepreneur and inventor Jay Walker gave the following talk in February 2009 at TED (see below or here).

According to Walker, two billion people are learning English, worldwide, and China is poised to become the largest English-speaking nation—this year. In China, children start to learn English in the third grade.

Whether or not we follow Walker’s portrayal of ESL training as a sort of mania—shouting one’s language lessons en masse may just be fun—we can agree with Walker’s assertion that the standardization of English as the language of business should make it easier to solve the world’s big problems. English may seem like the standard now, but Walker’s saying that’s just the beginning.

For businesses in countries that are predominantly English-speaking, this could simplify overseas marketing, sales, and service. Conversely, as the Tom Friedmans of the world point out, international businesses will find it easier to invade those English-speaking countries.

Is your company marketing in English in countries that are adopting English? Does the propagation of English expand your international opportunities?

In “Marketing Small Businesses with Twitter” [NYT, 7/23/09], Claire Cain Miller profiles some small businesses that are using Twitter’s free platform to communicate with customers and peers. See the New York Times site: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/business/smallbusiness/23twitter.html.

When we strip away the hype around Twitter (hype that is already normalizing a bit), we can see Twitter as a platform that is

1. simple: Twitter is constrained in a good way. The focus is on message, not format—the character limit brings focus.
2. open: Through search, hashtags, @ replies, and visible follow lists, Twitter is built for discovery. The network effects are almost strong enough to let you sit back and succeed.

Twitter deserves a place in most companies’ communication portfolio. It’s a limited user set, and there are dangers in diluting a brand’s voice, but the benefits are strong.

Are you using Twitter for business? Have customers found you through Twitter?

We had the pleasure of editing the first edition of NetLingo, Erin Jansen’s dictionary of approximately 2,500 terms related to computing and the Internet.

Today, NetLingo.com was cited in The Wall Street Journal, in an article by Stephanie Raposo on translating the abbreviations used in texting. You can read the article, “Quick! Tell Us What KUTGW Means,” online (for the next seven days) by clicking here.

Although you may not come across these acronyms and homophones at work—as you attack people or are attacked in an intergenerational one-upgeekship—texting is still growing, and not just among teens.

On the WSJ.com page, several comments dispute or diminish the presence or importance of texting abbreviations. I use them rarely but consider them useful tools for communication, like any other sort of jargon. Interestingly, the article ranks second among today’s most e-mailed articles (and ninth, oddly enough).

Bravo, Erin! Keep up the good work—I mean, KUTGW!