Twitter Mania

I have recently been checking out the new web-craze called Twitter. I heard mention of it many times on TWiT (http://www.twit.tv/twit) before I finally decided I would check it out. At first I was confused as to what the heck was the big deal - but I suddenly "got" it when I added Leo Laporte, the host of TWiT, to my friends list. Suddenly I felt I was connected with his life in a way that I've never experienced before. It seems silly, but knowing what he was up to during the day kept me somehow feeling closer to him. I didn't really feel like a stalker, though in truth there is definitely a stalker element to this, but rather as some kind of privileged friend that had Leo on my MSN account or something and I kept getting IM messages from him.

It is strange to know more about what Leo is doing during the day than my own wife, or anyone else in my life, other than my coworkers. Very interesting.

I think the other thing that I have come to associate with twitter is a sense of being in the midst of a maelstrom of web links and blogging and cool links. As soon as I added a few of the "popular" or "A-list" tweeters, such as Scoble & Calcannis (sp?) I found myself quickly overwhelmed with the amount of links they were posting and the sheer volume of information those personalities could shovel at the populace in a day. They seemed to have a capacity for reading and trolling and posting links that far exceeded my meager ability to read them.

In the end I can simply de-friend the ones that are to annoying/noisy. I liked Jason Calcannis' style, but the guy is hyperactive at a level I can't match - so I removed him from my friends list and suddenly the world seems a bit more peaceful now.

Now if I can just get the gumption up to drop Scoble from my list. ..