I'm a big fan of Twitter. I've mentioned it before. Admittedly it took me a long time to get onboard with Twitter and to see its purpose. I originally joined and began using it just to end Kaizar's constant hounding and proselytizing about the greatness of Twitter and twittering and things twits. It took a while, but I've now become a huge fan of this service especially as a few more of my friends have joined and started using it. You ask, "What is Twitter exactly?" And why should you Twitter? This short video below does an EXCELLENT job of explaining it and I hope it convinces you to join and start twittering! On a side note, I also love the video's creativity. Fantastic stuff. It really makes me want to learn video editing.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o]
What makes Twitter so appealing to me is that it does a great job of incorporating mobile phones. I primarily use Twitter with my cell phone, which has a qwerty keypad making it easy to write. And it's great to receive my friends' Twitter updates as a text message essentially on my mobile.
On a related note, I think the time is ripe for someone to re-examine Robert Putnam's seminal study Bowling Alone.