What is Twitter,

- is there any reason I should care?

It's a kind of social networking site, and is generating huge amounts of buzz among the web's early adopters thanks to a simple conceit. All twitter.com does is ask: "What are you doing?" The idea is that it offers a way for individuals to provide more detailed status updates to their friends, family and contacts. And, crucially, it delivers those updates across a variety of different media - either through its website, over instant messaging or by SMS to your mobile phone.

Since launching a twoyears ago as a side project by the people behind the podcasting and audio site Odeo, Twitter has gained traction with a large number of Silicon Valley cognoscenti and some of the web's most high-profile names. Critics say it is another pointless distraction in a world already suffering information overload, and wonder how users manage to keep tabs on what they're really up to.

True, on first glance it is a baffling and seemingly pointless service - but underneath it proves intriguing, useful and addictive for those who live on the move. One observer called it "the Seinfeld of the internet ... a website about nothing". Twitter's backers have form in this area. One, Nebraskan Ev Williams, was a founder of Blogger.com, the site that kick started the huge growth of blogging in the late 1990s. Another, Biz Stone, was involved in the early days of Xanga.com - a MySpace-style affair that is now one of the top 50 sites in the world.

It is no surprise, then, that some believe Twitter's service is the logical evolution of blogging. The two platforms have much in common; and while blogging is still much derided, it has been adopted by millions of people.

Twitter has been growing fast too, and in recent times it has been doubling subscriber numbers every month. Its makers said that the past weekend saw the number of messages sent triple, thanks to the conglomeration of users at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Some adopters have taken this growth as the reason to use it as a sort of "internet firehose", corralling quickfire opinions from around the globe.

The site isn't just populated by technoheads, however. It's also used by politicians (US presidential candidate John Edwards, for example), fictional characters (including Chewbacca and R2D2) and even the odd internet marketer or two (I have been using it for the past few months: twitter.com/wilsonblaney).

The rapid-fire model may be superseded when internet access become ubiquitous, but right now Twitterers have found that a quick text message does the trick for them. It's even been the medium of choice for some breaking news announcements.

So will it be a useful addition to the web, or simply another MySpace-like black hole that sucks away at our free time? Nobody knows, but when the big decision does arrive, it's likely to be Twittered before it hits the rest of us.

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