So, why now?

I always dismissed it as an unnecessary distraction, and as it appears, that's ultimately 99% of the fun. But there is more to it than that. There is the possibility of personal discovery in the way of discovering similar interests. There is immediate help available. You may not blog "wonder where i should eat in Seattle", but you might twitter it, and if you have any tweeting friends (which i have few), you may get some advice. But recently, I've noticed links to twitter updates (or statuses) in web development blogs that I frequent as part of a general conversation on web development. The kind of conversation that we've learned to follow in posts is now carried over into tweets. Great.

Will the world be out of balance when this happens? Should I be Jaiku-ing this?

If Hillary Rodham Clinton were twittering?…

Well, she is. Obama and McCain too. As of March 8, 2008:

Barack Obama: followers: 14,365, following: 13,731, updates: 77

Hillary Clinton: followers: 1831, following: 0, updates: 66

John McCain: followers: 342, following: 849, udpates: 150

Not surprisingly, Obama has the twitter edge. I find it interesting that the crew (or intern) that manages his account chooses to follow others, where Clinton does not. I also find it interesting that McCain is following nearly three times as many than are following him and has twice as many updates as either of the other two. I prefer to think that they are actually the ones twittering away, and in Obama and McCain's case, following the updates of others. "I can't believe Byron is eating a panini for lunch again!!!" Still though, you have to applaud the effort.

And then there's this

In case you've missed it

Twitter sets out to answer the question "what are you doing right now", in 140 characters or less. The full on explanation can be found in this video.