I’ve been Twittering for four days now, which obviously doesn’t make me a long-term veteran — but I’ve got enough of a sense of the mechanism that I can make a few observations:

1. With or without me, Twittering hasn’t (yet) brought about world peace, cured cancer, stopped the increase in global warming, or achieved any other stupendous results. But that’s okay; it does indeed fulfill the function of a simple, unintrusive, online, world-wide form of asking, and answering, the simple question, “What’s going on?” Those who work in traditional offices do this all the time with their office-mates; but some of us work alone, in our office-at-home — and many of us have professional/personal friendships and relationships with people all over the world, whom we rarely see in person. There are lots of situations where I have neither the time nor the energy to send or receive a 2-page email message to such friends and colleagues, describing all of the gory details of what I’ve been doing for the past week or month … it’s enough to send a “tweet” (i.e., a Twitter message) indicating that bad weather in Detroit last night caused several flights to be canceled, and that I finally arrived home, tired and grumpy. And it’s enough to see a short tweet from David Weinberger, telling me that he’s at the Amsterdam airport, having enjoyed a “wacky, wonderful Veerstichting conference in Leiden” that was apparently so enjoyable that he wants to “marry all of Holland.” I don’t know what Veerstichting is all about, and I’m sure I’ll see a more detailed blog article about it from David sometime in the future (indeed, he has already done so: click here for his Oct 11th blog posting) … but his personal reaction was enough to make me smile with pleasure for the good time he had, and then move on with the rest of my dull, busy day.
2. During my brief four days in the Twitter community, nine people have decided to start “following” me — i.e., receiving a message on their cell phone, or Twitter web page, whenever I post a Twitter “update.” But I only know three of these people. I have no idea who the other six are, or why they have any interest in the trivia of my life. It doesn’t particularly bother me, but I have to admit that I asked myself, “Should I be following these six people, if they’ve decided to follow me?” So far, I haven’t done so; I don’t have that much spare time. But as discussed below, perhaps I will at some point in the future.
3. I’m still checking to see if any of my friends, (extended) family, clients, or business colleagues are on Twitter; and aside from three Web 2.0-savvy folks whose Twittering I was already aware of before I got started, I still haven’t found anyone else. I’ve got a thousand names in my email address book, and 9,200 names in my overall contact list; surely someone in that list must be on Twitter. But, so far, none of the hundred or so people with whom I interact most often on a day-to-day basis are registered Twitterers. That raises the obvious question: if you become active in Twitter, do you spend less time with your “old” network, and more time with a “new” network? On that basis, should I begin following the 9 strangers who are now following me? I need to think about this a little more …
4. I’ve considered sending invitations to various friends, family members, and business colleagues to join Twitter (after all, it’s free and simple to use); but the explicit and implicit feedback and comments I’ve gotten strongly indicate to me that very few, if any, would accept such an invitation. I think this is largely a generational issue: many people in their 30’s, or older, instinctively think of Twittering as frivolous, trivial, and narcissistic. Yet they would have no hesitation carrying on such “trivial” conversations on the phone, or in person, with the people with whom they like to share the casual details of their lives. In any case, I have no interest in fighting any battles in this area: if someone isn’t enthusiastic about Twittering, or at least mildly curious, I’m not going to waste any time trying to persuade them. And because of that, maybe I will start following some of the nine strangers who are following me. If they turn out to be dull or obnoxious, I can stop following them; indeed, I can even “block” any messages from them.

As David Weinberger observed in a recent blog about Twittering (or was it a Twitter-tweet about blogging?), it’s too early to tell whether Twitter will have any kind of permanent, significant impact on society, or the broader collection of Web 2.0 technologies. But at the very least, it’s an interesting phenomenon, and one that I’ll continue playing with as long as it continues to be so….

P.S. I was curious to know how many people are currently using Twitter, but couldn’t find any information on their web site. I sent an email to a PR person, whose contact details were provided in the site’s “about” page; a couple hours later, I got an email reply indicating such details are not published. I read on a recent blog (I can’t remember where) that there are about 100,000 Twitterers; but I don’t know if that figure is accurate. If you have any statistics in this area, please let me know.