Very few companys’ products and services have achieved the holy grail of true brand penetration – that is when their brand enters the day to day lexicon of the general public. How many of you hoover your floors, drink vodka and coke, use sellotape etc? More often than not, you won’t be hoovering with a Hoover vacuum cleaner…

When it comes to online companys and their services, only Google and Facebook to date have really accomplished anything near the level of those other, older brands – people are googling and facebooking each other all of the time – however now, Twitter is poised to make that breakthrough.

While still a long way behind Facebook, Twitter enjoyed explosive growth during 2010 both in terms of users and in terms of general awareness of the brand.  Over in the US, the likes of Lady Gaga, Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber have long since carried the torch, while in the UK we’ve had advocates in the form of the less glamourous but certainly just as influencial Stephen Fry and Jonathon Ross.

Yet it may be an unlikely celeb who leads the way to penetrating public peception over on these fair isles – Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand.

Rio is an active and avid user of Twitter, and one of the very few high profile footballers to use the service.  He engages regularly with his followers and often involves them in his own attempts at Twitter “movements” – just this morning Rio and his follows sparked off a trend for the hashtag “#toomuchmoneywhen” – which was posted with quips about the point at which you know you have too much money (i.e. “#toomuchmoneywhen you no longer look at price tags”).

Over the last few months I’ve read references to Rio’s Twitter activity in the national press several times, with journalists even going to far as to quote his account as a source within football articles; and more and more discussion of the matter has entered into football related shows.

The most notable for me was this past weekend when, during a match between Man Utd and Spurs, there was much discussion during commentary about Rio on Twitter, which prompted further discussion at half time not only about Rio but about Twitter use in general, and to top it all off the top trends during the match included discussion of panelist and ex-footballer Dwight Yorke’s odd choice of shirt.

While Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry have done a lot for raising the general public awareness of Twitter; having it take a staring role in a high profile football match is surely sending it on its way to “the man on the street” in a massive way.  This is undoubtedly just the beginning of a major breakthrough for the brand which will see it nestling right there alongside Facebook and Google.