Is Twitter really good for anything?

Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, I still use it.

Everyone’s heard of Twitter. Senators use it, newscasters blabber about it, but what is it? This is as simple as I can state it: Twitter is a service where you (the user) post 140 character messages, which are meant to update people following you (subscribed to your updates, etc) about what you are currently doing. You can also search messages and reply to other messages and do a few other neat things with third-party applications (I’ll cover this later). The prompt you see is “What are you doing?”, and your job is to explain that in 140 characters or less in your message. Anyone following your updates will now be aware of whatever you are doing at the moment, if all goes according to plan.

Sounds rather lame, I have to admit. Why not just use IM, or SMS messages, or post on a blog or bulletin board? There are a million other ways to accomplish this task. Twitter seems pretty unnecessary.

There are a few good (mostly) legitimate reasons to use it, however. Chief among them, in my book: if you’re a geek and you’re into trendy technology, Twitter is the cat’s pajamas. One side-effect of its popularity among the tech-savvy is that a whole sub-culture has grown up out of developing cool, innovative applications for use with Twitter — lots of which use the very hip Adobe Air framework, which allows for visually impressive interfaces, seamless installs, and cross-platform executables. My favorite app has to be TweetDeck, which not only greatly improves on the Twitter interface, but adds much more functionality, including integration with Facebook.

For me, this was the only reason I decided to join Twitter, and that was after putting it off for at least a year. I felt the whole concept reeked of narcicissm and self-centeredness, and that the short message length would prevent me from saying anything of value. Both turned out to be partially true to some extent — beware those who brag about Twitter followers or try to share philosophical wisdom through sound bites — but my mistake was that I was confusing Twitter with a blogging platform. Twitter isn’t meant to replace blogging, despite being labeled a “micro-blogging” platform. At least, it’s not meant to replace blogging in the way I do it. After I realized this, I came to like Twitter for what it is.

For me, Twitter has become an easy way to keep in touch with what my friends are doing. Not in the annoying, minute-to-minute update on every minute detail of your life way that I feared, luckily. Rather, the messages tend to be slightly more broad, such as “There’s a lan at X’s house tonight” or “Hey, I found this cool thing.” In other words, it’s a way for me to keep track of people, and let them keep track of me.

Sure, it’s not essential, and sure some people take it way too far, but that’s always true of these things. Twitter is just a victim of its own hype, in a way. If you listen to the way it’s covered in the press, it seems like it’s the next greatest thing. Well, it probably isn’t, but it’s a neat little tool worth checking out.

P. S. Some famous people have great tweets. I genuinely enjoy following (of Nine Inch Nails) and (of Mythbusters); they always have something interesting to say. Additionally, I recommend you follow and .