Alright... the young'n has to chime in here with a tweet or two:
First off, a little respect for the youth today, who, believe it or not, have to deal with issues that simply didn't exist when you were growing up. Just because we approach problems in a seemingly different manner doesn't mean we're incompetent idiots, so lighten up on us younger folks!
Second, and for the record: I do not use twitter, facebook, myspace, or the like. Not because it is a "dumb" tool (there are no dumb tools), but because I personally have no use for it.
I do use email, Google, Skype, a cell phone, text messaging, wireless internet access, mobile broadband, HDTV and Blue-ray... how about you? -- all of these technologies share their root in some "dumb kid" playing Nintendo instead of baseball. Be thankful for our "slacker hackers".
My observation: the pace of technology advance in the last 10 years has been astounding. So outrageous in fact, that new technology is often not designed with a specific purpose when it was developed. It's kind of like: ok, we have the ability to send short messages to mobile individuals, now what? (btw, and aside, to answer one of the questions brought up above, I would suspect that most Twitter users are using it through their mobile phone web browsers, which have gotten real good in the last 3-4 years...) Eventually, people will find ways to use Twitter that will knock your socks off.
For example, I work for a professional services firm (a civil engineering firm). I would love it if we had a inter-office "twitter-like" software application that was always running in the background on my desktop. When I have a question that can be answered by a colleague in a few short sentences, should I 1) walk down the hallway maybe to find that they aren't there, or that they aren't the right person to ask, thus wasting my time and theirs, or 2) call them on the phone, interrupting them and potentially having similar troubles as number 1), or 3) send out a short "tweet" to the office... "hey, anyone out there know if we can drill a 200 foot boring in a week?" and allow the most knowledgeable co-worker to reply at their convenience with something like "yeah, we did it last week, see the Smith file." If i need more info, I look at the Smith file and / or now specifically target this individuals time when making in-person or over the phone inquiries. I think you will all agree this allows all parties involved to be as efficient as possible.
...To be continued....
