Twitter is the new rage. It's a mini-blog site that updates a distribution list by phone or IM automatically every time a one line (or so) entry is made. Kind of like texting on steroids. For general use it can be irritating. Like the push email technology of the mid-nineties which eventually clogged my email box to capacity with unread but worthy stuff.

Short messages arrive constantly telling you that someone is at lunch, at the airport or whatever.

But this can also be incredibly useful. Conferences need this. Political campaigns want to know where candidates are every moment. Groups working on joint projects can be updated as things happen. Sales and marketing forces could benefit from knowing that sales are happening across a territory/state/country/world.

It's a many to many conversation through a central focal point. An always on concept,  to a new degree and in a new way. This boom in ideas, web2.0, is producing fascinating new tools. Some useful. Some of limited use. Some of use we can't quite see fully yet. This is the latter.

Finally; is it cool because the name is cool? Who knows. But the popular geek imagination has been caught and a torrent of new concepts are being erected (global maps of the location of the latest twitterer) incredibly quickly.

Thism idea is here to stay. In some form