Just read Mr. Rheingold’s thoughts on Twitter (he’s the chap behind Smart Mobs), and I think I can sum it up even more succinctly than he can (granted, his answer was off the cuff when asked by a student), i.e. the answer to “why are you hooked on Twitter?”

My answer? <drum roll please>

Its because I can listen and participate, in real time, with a giant chat room full off interesting people, who at any given time, are thinking out loud, reporting on things they find important, but doing so in a fairly terse and concise way; and, who are almost always reachable and generally approachable about answering any particular question you might have.

Ok, fine. Its a long sentence. :)

The importance of that above explanation is partially dependent on the quality of people in the chat room, i.e. the people who you are following on Twitter, and how important what they’re doing at any one time is to you, but also dependent on the fact that Twitter necessarily restricts you to 140 characters, meaning there’s little room for bluster or irrelevant blatherings (although there are exceptions) by well meaning “friends”.

This is a good thing, because, as a whole, reducing the irrelevancy of stuff will necessarily increase the overall utility and relevancy of the remaining “content”.

Furthermore, because you can Twitter while not tethered to a desk/lap top, its possible to provide insights and report on observations while you’re out doing / seeing stuff, as in conferences, meet ups and much more. There’s a reason why Twitter took off at SXSW last year, and that’s because people were using it to report on stuff they were seeing, attending, editorialize it with their own thoughts, and other, more practical things, like where to meet up for drinks.

Not philosophical enough for you?

Well, if you wanted to get philosophical, you could phrase it thusly (I know its not really a word, “thusly”, but anyway) — getting hooked into Twitter is almost like a bit of a psychedelic experience, in that its like getting hooked into a shared consciousness, where, if you’ve got the appropriate Twitter appliance, you’ll discover an automatic flowing stream of thoughts, feelings, observations, and terse insights of a very interesting crowd of peers.

Without any pharmaceutical aids, that is. :)

Now whether or not you find that something that is utterly fascinating, utterly useful, or an utter waste of time (and its not mutually exclusive, really), is probably a function of a number of things.

But if you don’t “get” it, the best thing to do is just experience it, preferably by “friending” people you know, which is getting easier all the time with Twitter’s ability to find people that you might know, and get you hooked up into ‘finding’ them on Twitter.