Twitter.com: A strange bird indeed

Twitter is a social networking service that is hard to wrap your head around at first glance. This is a site that asks a simple question from its user base: What are you doing right now. Your mission is to describe what you are doing in 140 characters or less. I told you it was strange.
But once you get past this strangeness things do get interesting. It turns out that the 140 character limit is perfect for doing SMS messages. For those of you that don't know what SMS is, it is a system support by almost all mobile phones today. I'll get to why SMS is relevant in a bit. It also turns out that a message less than 140 characters long is digestible and quickly readable when there are a lot of messages to be read.
Getting started on twitter is very simple. Just create an account, and once completed you are taken to the home page with an area at the very top that asks "What are you doing?" Type in your answer and press the update button. That's it, you've just created your first tweet. Things you might want to twitter about are: "Eating an apple" or "Heading to the party" or "Can't find where I left my phone".

Well that's all great, but who cares about what you are doing! This is where the concept of following and followers comes in. Followers are those people who have decided to receive updates on you tweets. To become a follower, twitter allows for searching of the user base. You can search based on name, location, email address and so on. There may be people you already know who are on twitter so using the search dialog is certainly worthwhile. And don't forget to follow Stiffarm.
As time goes on you'll find that people have decided to follow you. These people are your followers. Your followers have, for one reason or another, become interested in finding out what you are doing. It might be your best friend, your mom, or your boss. And don't worry, you can always block your boss from receiving those updated. There are a number of security and privacy options available that will keep you in control of who receives your updates and who you receive updates from.
Part of the appeal of twitter is that you can send and receive updates in a number of ways, including:

• your mobile phone
• an instant messaging service
• your logged-in home page on twitter
• m.twitter.com which is perfect for browsing using a smart phone or other small format device
• any of the third party applications on Twitter Fan Wiki, made by the talented folks who've utilized twitter's API.

Twitter's terms of service makes it clear that children under the age of 13 are not permitted. Older children will probably enjoy the flexibility of the twitter api, espically the ability to receive tweets using their IM client, or mobile phone. But as always, parents should always verify their kids followers and the people they are following. It would be a good idea for parents to ensure that their children's tweets are set to private, so that the messages are not publicly viewable.

In the end, twitter might fit the bill if you want a simple and flexible interface for social networking. You can twitter away using numerous devices and keep in touch with those you want in your inner circle. If you want extended functionality such as the ability to share files, music, and pictures, then twitter will leaving you desiring more and you should checkout other services such as Pounce.
At the time of this posting, twitterdir is reporting over 950,000 twitter users. From the twitter stats trend-lines it is clear that the twitter community is growing quickly.