Twitter, twitter

In the world of social networking, websites can come and go as ever more fickle users surge through cyberspace as orderly as sheep scattered by wolves. Just look at Friendster’s precipitous drop from must-be-at status to tumbleweed-ridden wasteland and Facebook’s successful bid for growth by opening up to pretty much everybody. Twitter is the newest social networking site to spread like shrapnel over the web: a shared blog that is limited to one hundred and forty characters per entry (twenty less than a text message) posted on the web, over Instant Messaging or SMS’ed from your cell phone. Once you have convinced your friends to join, you all get each other’s posts. What this creates is a sort of heartbeat of what your friends are doing, in real time from wherever you are. In all likelihood Twitter ‘s popularity will peak, stabilize and erode as the wave of users washes out to the Internet sea again, but for now, it is likely that your friends will end up there and you will have to join if only so you won’t be left out. Twitter’s forté is simplicity and singularity of purpose, no lengthy profiles, no posting of pictures, no movies, and no music. Whether this will be enough to secure a place for itself in the future remains to be seen, you, however, have nothing to lose: join for free at http://twitter.com, just watch for your SMS bills. Twitter is also extendable via tools provided by the site if you have the programming chops, but even if you don’t, you can take advantage of the ultimate Twitter mashup, the hopelessly addictive Twittervision, which continuously pops real-time Twitter entries over a global map.