So everyone here at SXSW is hot on Twitter. It pricked my curiousity, so I decided to sign up and see what all the fuss is about. OMG! It’s fun! After playing around with it for a bit I have decided there are two sides to Twitter, one of which I didn’t see until I actually started using it, and the other is the obvious side.

The Obvious Side
Texting or Iming “I am eating pringles” is really useless information. People will see it and read over it, it will get no responses. But it was fun for me to know that Twitter-ers will see my words on their screen, whatever. This has no practical purpose except as a visitor to the site, it’s kind of interesting to watch, probably kind of like watching the Search Terms screen at Google Headquarters. From the outside, there is no draw in getting a Twitter account, just watching what other people are doing.

The Not So Obvious Side
And then I had the “ah-hah” moment where I realized when Twitter is really useful. Organizing events without organizing events. Twitter, to me, feels like del.icio.us did when I initially wrapped my head around the concept. Once again it’s tying in a bunch of different things and offering up the data in an entirely new and interesting way.

For instance, there are a ton of people at SXSW who kind of know eachother. Some of them may know each other well enough to call, or well enough to text. For the most part though, the majority of people who are acquaintances and would really like the opportunity to know eachother better. So instead of me having to text people to find out where they are, I can just subscribe to the data they offer up. Whenever a twitter-er writes a new message, I can get alerts via SMS. I can keep all of my friends, but change my subscriptions to their alerts at any time.

Ultimately Twitter is just another tool to help you communicate with a large number of people effectively. They subscribe to you and what you’re doing. You only give up the information you want.

Seems like a perfect fit. This isn’t something I would use every day (I don’t think) but then again I haven’t had it for more than a day. It’s great for organizing a social life, it’s really an effortless task. I think it will be a little while before John Q. Public catches on, but when they do, it will be big.

Thanks to all the Twitter addicts who turned me on to it.

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