Article posted on Mar 22
Skype, IM, Blogs, Youtube… ready for the next big thing? Well, a definite contender seems to be twitter. Basically, twitter is an “I am here” sort of application… the next step beyond you IM or facebook status. You can update your twitter status from their website, through their easy to use API, or from your cell phone. It lets your friends (or the world, if you feel so inclined) see what you’re up to.ÂÂ
So my personal experience? Mixed. It’s neat to be able to keep in touch with people… (dang, I use … a lot, dont’ I 
) but how really candid can you be with something like this? A message taken out of context, or that seemed funny at the time, can be dangerous. Especially since Twitter will clearly be adopted by a market even younger than myspace (although the rest of us get a kick out of it too ).ÂÂ
Another word of adive: don’t have it send updates to your phone unless you REALLY are that interested in knowing when your buddy is thinking about weird stuff.  Having a movie or conference call interrupted to find out that Bob is “Looking at ducks” can be annoying. Unfortunately their IM integration is currently down (read that: overwhelmed) which is sad, as I think that could be worth while.  Speaking of overwhelmed… the site positively crawls right now.
So my conclusion: Out the gate, a “cute” social tool. With a bit of API integration an some creative thought it can be a very valuable way to push content (snow alerts to cell phones, news info to IM clients, etc). I certainly will not be giving my “buddies” a way to send their status real-time to my cell phone again any time soon . Once the growing pains get resolved Twitter, as a gateway to distribute content through a variety of consumer-chosen mediums is a tool that will be more and more widely used.
So what’s your take? Are you using it, and if so how?ÂÂ
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