Have you been Twittered?

As soon as one of my friends heard that I started a blog, she sent me an article on twitter.com. The article sounded pretty interesting, but it was more like a teaser. I didn’t understand very well what Twitter was and why I should even join. The article made it seem that Twitter is like Facebook for writers. You can keep track of one another’s work progress, network, and get inspiration. Sounds good, but I’m not a writer.

I decided to find out more about Twitter because I was intrigued by the service’s description on the main page: it’s meant to help people keep in touch by short answers to the question “What are you doing?” You do not have to join to find out more about the site. If you go to twitter.com, you can watch a video about what twitter is and how it works. That’s how I found out that you actually do not have to be a writer to want to join. You just have to be somebody who likes to keep in touch with family and friends, and know what they’re doing between phone calls and the time you’ll see them for coffee later. You can get and post updates – under 140 characters – from your computer or phone.

It all sounds good, but being the pragmatic person that I am, I’m wondering when much becomes too much? In other words, do we really need to know everything our friends are doing every second of the day? Also, in the age of instant gratification and information overload, is on-line networking replacing real life and direct interaction? However, one aspect of this service that I do like is the ability to support businesses. Tweeter blogs about various companies using the service for updates between and for employees, about disasters, or even for sending news from Mars. This makes Twitter unique, and will probably grow to be the pager of the 21st century.

I decided I did not need to Twitter now. It seems, though, like a very useful tool, developed by a growing and innovative team, so I’m looking forward to future developments.