I'm a Twitter convert

I gave Twitter a nod in yesterday's post, but I've been hearing so much about it recently that I decided to elaborate. I didn't realize there was actually a correlation between Twitter hype and the lead-up to SXSW, mostly because I knew I wasn't going and would have other things to focus on (though it seems like everyone I know is there!), until my colleague Daniel enlightened us all with his SXSW Twitter report earlier today. I must say that I can see Twitter fitting well into a large, hard-to-find-people event in which folks are arriving from all over the country--many of whom may not have ever met each other in real life. So it's kind of perfect to be gaining momentum right around this kind of high-profile tech event.

Anyway, I started using Twitter two or three days ago, and it really is kind of addictive because you don't want to have anything out-of-date on there (or at least I don't. Does that make me OCD?) I don't have a whole lot of friends using it at the moment, but it already has proven somewhat convenient--case in point, earlier today I noticed that one of my friends on Twitter had listed that he had some work to do. I had some work to catch up on as well, so I shot him a text message and asked if he wanted to find a WiFi-enabled café and do some unofficial coworking. Yeah, I'm an addict now, I suppose. I can foresee it being as socially relevant as Facebook if it can gain the user base. Right now it looks like it's restricted primarily to geeks, hipsters, and the gray area in between, but it's easy to use and not overtly nerdy in any way (something that Digg has an issue or two with), which in my opinion means it does have mainstream potential.

(For the record, I have turned off mobile alerts after my cell phone started buzzing repeatedly at 2 AM with potentially intoxicated Twitter updates from one of my friends. I'm also primarily using the Mac app Twitterrific -- very cute little piece of software.)

Two confessional posts in a row! I guess it's guilty pleasure season.