Twitter what?

I knew that Twitter was huge, but I never felt compelled to venture into and explore this hit new social networking site. But after hearing the morning radio show hosts talk about it on my way to school, it occurred to me that if I don’t want to fall behind the times, I should see what the hype is all about. This is what I could find based on few clicks within the Google search results.

They market themselves as:
Twitter: What are you doing?
Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time.
• The impression I get from this short title and tagline is “glorified AIM away messages.” It is also similar to posting a status on Facebook. These messaging utilities have become damn near stalker-ish. Apparently people always want to know what everyone else is doing at every moment of the day. Why? Because this is what has evolved from our immediate access to technology and networks. It started with AIM when we would wait for our friends to sign on and if they didn’t, we had to know why. Then we realized that away messages were useful—you could remain signed on and receive messages, but if your away message explained why you weren’t sitting next to the computer. When facebook came along, it had a status feature built in. After a few years of intensifying popularity of status updates, Twitter has developed a website that satisfies our craving to let people know we have lives and for readers to keep up with friends.

Twitter.com presents this:

What is Twitter?
“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
• “What are you doing?” is Twitter’s marketing strategy.

Why use Twitter?
Why? Because even basic updates are meaningful to family members, friends, or colleagues—especially when they’re timely.
o Eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know.
o Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful.
o Partying? Your friends may want to join you.
• Proves my point about our craving to know what other people are doing.

How does it work?
With Twitter, you can stay hyper–connected to your friends and always know what they’re doing. Or, you can stop following them any time. You can even set quiet times on Twitter so you’re not interrupted.

Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.
• Quiet time?! Why not just sign out of the website or get away from the computer?!

Wikipedia was sure to give me some help with Twitter:
“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them.”
• If that’s not stalker-ish, I don’t know what is! Subscribe to others, have followers, restricted communication….all describe a relationship between a stalker and victim.

I think I’ll stick to my original plan and not give into this one.