What is Twitter?

From the Twitter FAQ: "Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be."

So. Think of Twitter as a cross between Instant Messaging, SMS, and blogging...in fact Twitter is trying really hard to popularize the term "micro-blogging" for itself. When you add a "tweet" to your Twitter page, either as a mobile text message (SMS), or via twitter.com directly, Twitter sends out that short message to your group of friends and posts it to your Twitter page. If your friends have phone alerts turned on they'll receive your message, or they may check your web page instead. You'll receive your friends mobile updates on your phone as well.

I guess it could be handy if I were say, driving across the country and wanted to keep my family and friends abreast of my position by sending tweets to my twitter page via SMS using my mobile phone as I drove, without having to stop and locate an Internet connected computer...or maybe not. A couple of years ago, this would have been considered a neat gadget for a web site to have but today it is boxed up like some sort of next-gen killer Web 2.0 app - but I just don't see it yet.

That hasn't stopped me from setting up my very own twitter page, where I hope you will go and subsequently become my friends so that you will have access to such gems as:

"Steph just realized he has to make a call but the phone at his desk is broken..."

and

"Balls of Fury is the worst movie ever made." (But with a title like that, you'd think it would be really good!)

Who wouldn't want to know that? Who doesn't have the time for that? (don't answer - they were rhetorical questions.) I must say though that I do enjoy using Jott to Twitter on occasion!