I subscribed to Dodgeball a few months back, and promptly realized I don’t have any local friends you give a rat’s ass about knowing where I’m at any given time, not to mention I don’t have any crushes. So I put it on the shelf and promptly forgot about it. Same thing with Twitter. When I first signed up, I was an early adopter and again, not too many people were joining my bandwagon. So I put it up, until last week when Twitter came up again in a conversation. I tried it again, and found that a few of my friends and a few others I’d like to call friends are using it.

In case you don’t know, Twitter, is a microfeed asking the simple question, “What are you doing?” The idea is to answer that question. This morning I wrote, “Still too early….must have Starbucks”. Presumably, everyone wanted to know I needed a caffeine fix and couldn’t make my brain adapt to the early time change. Whether or not that is true is up to those people who read my post.

As I have resumed using Twitter I think I have found a better use for its fast, quick, microfeed format: news updates of a breaking event. For instance, in high profile trials there are countless witnesses, motions and other events during a trial. If I were to update those events as they occurred, my friends and followers, would have an instant account of what’s going on. I may now give it a shot for that application. Todd Defren also found a use - quick recommendations for a specific job need. One of his friends helped him find a “cause marketer” in less than three hours.

Steve Rubel asked this morning if Twitter would replace blogging. Not likely, unless you can make a clear argument with only 140 characters. Of course, you could always link to your blog. Again, it’s more of an instant alert or friendly connection and in that function, I’ll bet more people will find a use for it.