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Apparently Twitter is the way to go—so much so, it’s becoming it’s own form of writing. Sigh. You can tell you’ve been around too long when new techs like this pop up and you just can’t bear to get involved. Dude, you think, I’m already blogging my fucking arse off. ANOTHER time sucker? I can’t do it. I just can’t. But there’s always someone new-to-everything in line behind you, ready to steal your readers with a pared down version of what you’re doing. Sheesh. I feel like a newspaper. So out of date and verbose.

Twitter has quickly become the preeminent way to go about “micro-blogging,” sending short real-time comments to the world (if it’s looking) and especially to anyone who signs up as a follower.

When the service was introduced in 2006, it was ridiculed as the latest narcissistic way to waste time online.

Last year, minds began to change. Twitterers tapped out tweets during the earthquake in China while the ground was still shaking and live during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. One of the first pictures of the airliner downed in the Hudson River last month, picked up by major newspapers and magazines, was “tweeted” by a 23-year-old tourist with an iPhone who happened to be aboard a ferry sent to the rescue. Suddenly, Twitter has become a venue for “citizen journalism,” a way to learn what’s happening sometimes even before news organizations themselves could find out.

“News no longer breaks, it tweets,” blogged Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley-based technology forecaster, last November during the Mumbai attacks. “If newspapers are the first draft of history, then blogs are the scratch pad. And in front of blogs are tweets,” he added in a phone interview last week.

Twitter is a classic example of the “law of unintended consequences,” says Matthew Fraser, who tracks the world of online social networking. At first, he says, people shared the “micro-banalities of life” such as “I’m at McDonald’s having a Big Mac.”

But Twitter now has “morphed” into something with real value and utility, says Mr. Fraser, coauthor of “Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work, and World.”

This was originally posted at Book Ninja by George Murray.

Reprinted By Permission.