Twitter upon first glance, is daft. If you were to click on that link right now you would see what appears to be disjoint messages from everyone answering the question "what are you doing right now?". If you are like me, that is probably the most inane thing EVAR, and you'll close that tab and be done with it. My god! It's worse then blogging! That being said, visiting the twitter main page is hardly a reasonable introduction to twitter at all.

In fact, I would say the best way to get introduced to twitter is to ignore the front page and join. Assuming you are one of my friends, add me and then you'll start seeing what it is all about. What everyone is doing is so absolutely unimportant to my own life that I just don't care. However, what my friend are doing can have some really serious impact to inspire, motivate and connect. Here are a few examples:

• mux twitters constantly about the time he spends in the studio, consequently I am sticking to my at-least an hour a week personal promise of studio time (but I've really spent 3 or 4) This is really quite a feat given how little time I have been in the studio before then.
• I've twittered about a track that I am listening to obsessively, which prompted Stormchild to go download and listen, and we've both been tarding over it ever sense.
• It's become a J-Pop support group between people who's identity will be protected.
• General questions can be posted via twitters, and answered in a matter of hours

Essentially Twitter is like broadcast IM. There have been plenty of times that I have wanted to broadcast something to my friends, but didn't feel it is worthwhile to actually bug someone with a message; in this cause I would just twitter it up.

but not only that, it tends to tighten ones social circle. I feel that I am getting tighter with my twitter friends, by virtue of this alternate communication channel.

The important thing about twitter isn't "What are you doing?" but rather, "What do you think is important about what you are doing?" I don't twitter that I am on the bus. I twitter about what I think is important, like The Key to a good morning routine or when discovering/creating A new turn of phrase. I think that is something special, these glimpses into what people feel is important enough in their daily lives.

All this being said, I am very glad that I got into the Status Message thing through twitter (and with the cool twitter group that I have) instead of through Facebook.

On top of it all, Twitter is RESTful. REST is cool.