Just when you think that if you're aware of what MySpace is then you're on top of geeky things and your kids might respect you, along comes Twitter. Not a blog, not a social networking space, Twitter is a conversation online with no one – and with everyone on the planet. Your short twitters can be sent from phone texting, IMs and blogs and are immediately online through Twitter. And yes, even from Web sites (they seem almost anachronistic now.)

Get a Twitter friend (or 50) and watch their happenings. Know what they're doing right now. Organize a dinner through Twitter and your Twitter friends will know where and when and in whose name the reservation was made. It's that easy – type your message and move on. Welcome to the conversation economy.

Setting up your phone for Twitters (noto bene: be sure you or your kids have unlimited text messaging) is a snap; getting Twitters through IM is a breeze. The developers are having a field day because now we have:

Twittervision! (The father of Twittervision is David Troy.)


If you have a personal avatar (icon), then your Twitterism and your mug shot show up reasonably close to your geographic point-of-origin. Twittering is perhaps this month's newest time-waster but it's as fascinating as can be and has become the darling of the uber-geeky set. Global voices are having conversations in real time and if you thought that fifth graders didn't know geography, this is novel and effective way to teach them where the international community lives and how they can talk to you right now.

If IMs, or texting, or logging into a Web site are too complicated for you, Firefox offers a Twitter plug-in. Switch your (probably) Google search default to Twitter and each string you type is automatically Twittered. Let's be careful out there: switch back to your search engine or you're going to share your searches with the world.

The next step in instant global communication has to be popular-level videophone.

Is this useful for your business? With an open developers' platform and creative programmers, Twitter is the closest app I've seen to replacing those pink while-you-were-out slips that decorate your doorway or cube glass when you step out to the restroom or dare to take lunchtime.