So I had planned to write something about Twitter a few days ago, but spent a few more days mulling about it. Twitter, for the less-2.0-inclined is a web application that spans both instant messaging and phone texting. It allows you to let a group of “friends” know exactly what you’re doing through a one-sentence message. If you wanted to define it a little more precisely, its something like a cross between blogging and instant messaging that crosses into the off-line-o-sphere. Its like instant messaging because … well, its instant. And its like blogging in that its a one-to-many activity. When you blast out a message like “I’m going to cut my toe nails“, everyone will know [update: actually, you can now message people directly as well]

Much like Dave Winer and one fellow Canadian blogger, I’m not entirely sold on it. Sure there are some posts floating around the web about Twitter’s benefits, but much like blogging, I think its dictated by who is using it and how its being used. Blogging *can* be gut-wrenchingly boring self-absorbed drivel. But it can also be so much more than that. The problem with Twitter is that what you think about Twitter is directly related to who your Twittering friends are.

This past weekend was a great example. South by South West (SXSW), the interactive media extravaganza in Austin Texas was attended by many Twitteree’s, and if any of them were in your group of “friends”, you could see what they were up to. And if you were actually *DOWN* for SXSW you could use it to self-organize yourselves.

If you’re not actively participating and self-organizing with Twitter, you will find that its a pretty banal service which caters to blogging’s own tendency towards self-absorption. After all, who *really* wants to know what I’m doing between cutting my toe-nails and changing my son’s diapers? There is a guilty pleasure component to watching and reading other people’s twitters … but how much attention do you really want to waste doing that?

I suspect the current backlash against Twitter post-SXSW my be related to the crushing banality of twitters that are floating around now. I asked Mat Ingram the other day what he plans to try and use Twitter with, and mentioned something about using it for relating existential thoughts. How about this one: “Twitterers are nothing else but what they make of themselves. I am going to put on socks, right about … now.”

tip: for those interested in knowing when I am going to, say, visit the in-laws, or hear my existential thoughts on, say, the necessity of prime-time sweeps, you may still catch me twittering for a little while longer over here: http://twitter.com/tonyhung. Probably not much longer, as my own thoughts barely interest me, but a little while longer … :)