What can you say in 140 characters or less?

If you're a Twitter veteran, then you should be able to say a lot in 140 characters or less.  The 3.2 million users of the free service have learned to adapt and remove all the extra clutter when creating messages to send to one another.

If implemented properly, Twitter can be used as a powerful social media tool to reach a large audience with a brief message or link to a web site.  In fact, it seems there is a growing number of people who believe Obama wouldn't have been able to win without the internet, including the use of Twitter.

Tech icons such as Robert Scoble and Leo Laporte both boast thousands of followers, while tweeting thousands of messages to their followers.  The service has branched away from geeks alone, as Barack Obama's Twitter account has the most followers, with a whopping 121,000+ followers.

The power of politics has helped several news sites, including the Los Angeles Times, see record traffic, with Twitter crippled several times due to traffic spikes.  On election day, which took place on Tuesday, the site saw a whopping 46 percent increase in Tweets compared to the previous Tuesday.

The number of people creating accounts on the site also increased 40 percent compared to seven days before.

Sure enough, once Obama collected the necessary electoral votes to become the next President, thousands of Twitter users headed to the site and expressed their joy about the historical night.  Even though it's unlikely President-elect Obama will have a lot of spare time to tweet, expect to see more politicians, athletes and entertainers hop aboard the Twitter bandwagon.