I have only been on Twitter for about 6 months and have only updated my profile a handful of times but I think I finally ‘get it.’ I understand why everyone is fanatical about twitter. If you have no idea what twitter is start here: www.twitter.com

But I have to try to explain it in my own words to try to justify to myself why I and others use it.

Phone calls, Instant Messaging, Text Messages you have to ask or check in with a friend to see what’s going on or what they are up to tonight. And its possible your at home some evenings and would be down for going out with friends or dinner but don’t call any up to see what they are up to. Twitter changes this... and it only works if at least a portion of your friends use it. Twitter works by allowing all users to post or tweet what they are up to at any given time. If I’m at my computer and am about to mow my lawn, I may post that. If I am working on a difficult computer algorithm issue I might post that, if I’m heading downtown to grabs some food I could post that. Whatever I’m up to or going to do I could easily post it on Twitter.

You can post from their website twitter.com, your phone via SMS, or use one of many desktop clients such as twhirl. Posting should take under 15 seconds, and doing 1 to 3 a day of significant items is enough to make it worthwhile.

Now that you can imagine all your friends occasionally updating what they are doing right now, picture a real time snap shot of that. Twittter gives you a display that would look something like this.

Sally: Waiting in line at the bar (2 minutes ago)
Ben: Heading downtown to Noodles and Company with Jerry, anyone else want to come? (5 minutes ago)
Mike: Walking the dog (5 hrs ago)
Chad: Arg, I’m all out of I can’t believe it’s not butter and have to go to the grocery store (about 7 hours ago)
Fred: Watching Freaks and Geeks (11pm June 21st 6/21/208)

All updates are posted chronologically and you can see what everyone is up to. Looking at whats going on this evening you could potentially grab some food with Ben and Jerry or call Sally and see who she is heading up to the bar with. Twitter gives you the ability to see what’s up right now with your friends.

The trouble I have with it is it has little adoption with my friends that are not in the IT field. I would be the only person they would know on Twitter so it would be pointless for them to get on it. Which means if you see the value in it you will have to really twist your friends arms to get them involved and on board with it.

You can also install the Facebook Twitter application and it can set your FaceBook ‘Status’ to your latest twitter message. Now all your Facebook friends know what you are up to as well.

I’m going to continue using it regularly for a couple months and see what happens.

If you know me and you are reading this, join twitter and follow me http://www.twitter.com/ryandoom

But even though it’s awesome, I am still concerned with being overwhelmed with notices from my Twhirl client, so I will most likely be attempting to catch up and join the conversations in the evening. I can’t see it increasing my productivity in anyway from 9-5 ... yet.