So Hugh Mcleod has deleted his Twitter account.

{First question new bloggers might have is “who is Hugh McLeod?”, in which case here are a things I’ve picked up: the dudehas been blogging for a long time; he draws pictures on the back of business cards; he is known for, amongst other things, being funny, and also bringing business to blogging — or, perhaps, the other way around — via a few notable clients, showing everyone that it was indeed possible to help your bottom line by blogging}

And, quite faithfully, Techmeme has picked up on this, thereby, if as if it already didn’t require Techmeme’s blessing — turning it into a Meme — and as usual, the usual suspects are chiming in.  Is it the end of Twitter?  Is it Twitter’s inflection point … to flatness?  Is this where Friendfeed picks up steam and steamrolls right over Twitter’s freshly turned carcass (hey, that was fast / premature)? Is it merely another signal that Civilization will simply end as we know it?

I’m pretty sure the answer is ‘nay’, although *being* one of the usual suspects (for aren’t we all regurgitating what’s on Techmeme, n’est-ce pas?), I’m going to throw in my 0.03c and get slightly metaphysical and trite at the same time (watch out, its a saccharine combination) which is merely that Twitter is like anything else in life:

You get out of it what you put into it.

The funny thing is that Twitter can be both a giant waste of time and a giant boon. Its all dependent on how you use it.  Hugh, for whatever his reasons, has decided Twitter’s output / required input wasn’t worth his time (time value for money, I suppose).

How is Twitter a giant waste of time?

I suppose there are lots of reasons, and I was going to make a giant list.  But they all derived out of a single kernel of truth:  Twitter can be a giant sinkhole for which you can spend a lot of non-productive time, and this can be in doing a *lot* of different things.

Whether its shooting the breeze about stuff that doesn’t add to your *personal* bottom line, or are passively reading / “listening” to conversations that are happening from people you’re following, or pruning your following list, or letting it constantly interrupt you while you’re trying to accomplish something meaningful, or actually spending a lot of time Twittering about things that neither help or interest you *or* the people that are following you (what I call “my cat’s breath smells like catfood” information), you can literally waste hours and hours doing absolutely nothing productive.

If you fall into any one of those things, Twitter can be a giant sinkhole from which it can be difficult to crawl out of, and you might find it easy to not find, or appreciate, how important and productive it *can* be.

How about the benefits of Twitter?

Well, Hugh talks about how important blogging has been to him with respect to *meeting* people and having ‘conversations’.  I agree.

Funny thing, though, is that Twitter complements *both* of those activities *as* bloggers, and injects rocket fuel into the mix. I mean, Twitter can be an awesome tool for both meeting like-minded people and having conversations, seemingly out of the blue with them.

But that’s not all.

Again, you can make a giant list of why Twitter is useful, but to me, if you want to reduce and boil it down, it all comes down to the reason why Hugh Mcleod blogs: its because of the connections you make, the relationships you build, and the benefits everyone derives therein.

A few days ago Hugh wrote that he was offered a contract to write a book.  Awesome.  I’m happy for the guy.

But is it possible that in a different circumstance, another individual may have gotten a similar contract through the contacts — or the personal availability — of being on Twitter?

I think so.

Let’s take a more concrete example — the post I wrote a few days ago on Wordpress blogs being hacked and busted into so that they’re part of a sophisticated blog-bot network? The inspiration for that came right out of Twitter, thanks to Allen Stern and Duncan Riley’s twits I just happened to be reading.

See, to me, Twittering is just one more channel that, if used wisely, can be the source of all kinds of tremendous personal and professional productivity, and is unique because of just how many people are plugged into it at any time, how most people are engaged and willing to actually answer you, *and* how real time it is.

Its just up to all of us to sort out how useful it *can* be, work those things, and minimize everything else.

{which, again, to be saccharine, is like everything else in life}

I don’t know exactly what or how much Hugh Mcleod was getting out of Twitter versus how much it took away from him / what he was putting into it, but the value curve for each of us is going to be different depending on each of our competing, personal demands at any given time.

For example, perhaps after getting that contract via Twitter, he just wants the time to write that book. :)