WebProNews

But I'm okay with that. :-) I use Twitter more to get a snapshot of what is going on at any given point in time. I do the same thing with Google's Hot Trends page, which shows bursts in search behavior. It's a good way of keeping up. It's impossible to keep up completely; talk about information overload! But I treat a bit like running into friends on the street who point over to something that's going on around the block. I'm not going to stand on the street (in the stream of consciousness as it were) and query everybody, but somewhat in the loop as opposed to completely out of it can yield some interesting results. I don't worry much about the conversation side of it, but instead just let the bits of info come pouring in. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes not.

In a smallish network, it could be an effective, real time communication device, but I fail to see it's advantages over instant messaging, unless it you use it as intended: a one to many broadcast device. However, as MacWorld proved, Twitter needs to be more on the ball to handle sudden bursts of traffic. There might be, though, an efficiency advantage in social networking, allowing people to make contact, via following the followers, with people they would otherwise have difficulty reaching...so long as you can believe an avatar is who he says he is. :-)

Like everything else, it's more complicated than it looks and like Twitter from the beginning, it's more useful than it appears, but even that usefulness has its limits. What will be fun is when it reaches some kind of critical mass. Then we watch the abuse begin as gamers flood the system and Twitter comes to a screaching halt. Until then, we party.