While I wouldn’t normally talk about issues like Charlie Sheen in the news, as of yesterday the actor signed up for Twitter. You can find his account here: Charlie Sheen on Twitter. His account is ‘verified’ and now a day later he has over a million people following him. Wow.

He’s also on TwitPic sharing pictures – this one is of him with one of his Goddesses.

So why do we care? There is certainly a real life drama happening in Charlie’s life right now, and while over the weekend he was taking a more traditional approach to his PR with interviews on NBC, ABC and CNN, yesterday he shifting gears and opted to instead go directly to the public. He is doing that with Twitter. And the public, or at least one million people on Twitter have a very serious appetite to hear his message.

A few years ago that would have been impossible. Today, its just a matter of a few phone calls and then its time to start typing away.

Okay, so we are not all Charlie Sheen. But I can assure you that if you are in business, there are people who are very interested in what you do, and Twitter is a great opportunity to connect with them. If you are not already on Twitter I’d strongly suggest you consider joining if only to see what is happening there – I think you’ll be surprised at how relevant the platform is and how important Twitter can become in your marketing mix.

Meanwhile the Charlie Sheen circus continues. Pay attention to what Charlie is doing and try to draw some reasonable parallels for your own business. Sounds crazy I know, but trust me, you rarely get an event like this and if you want to really see Twitter in action this is a great opportunity to devote 10 minutes of your day for the next few days to learn something.