All that twitters.

(From Business and Finance)

A little over a year ago, I badly dented my cutting-edge cred by admitting ignorance when confronted by an eager techie acquaintance who, bursting with enthusiasm, asked, "are you on Twitter?" This being one of those awkward, increasingly rare, physical-world real-time conversations, there was no way to cheat and Google the word. Was this a new drug I was meant to have tried or some bit of kit? From the dilation of my friends pupils, I wasn't sure.

So I had to go with looking a bit like John McCain when confronted with this sort question. Confused, a bit weary, with a healthy dollop of scepticism.

He explained that Twitter was a "microblogging" social appliance that allows people to lifeblog, using messages of no greater than 140 characters in length. I think I managed to stutter, "so what do people, erm, use it for?" Well, twittering that you're awake, for starters. That you've burned the toast. That the guy next to you on die bus is talking to himself.

"And who's reading this?" I asked. My friend explained that he had more than 250 people "following" him, that is subscribing to receive these tiny slice-of-life updates.

I must have looked stunned, because my friend started talking faster, perhaps mistaking horror for joy. Sounding even more like die 10,000-year-old man, I stopped him and said that sounded like a whole level of hell that no sane person would want in their life.

I was wrong. On a lot of counts. I've been blogging for a little over three years at this point. People thought it a bit odd back then - some still do. But blogging, particularly when you consider that everybody with a page on Facebook or Bebo is in some respect doing the same thing, is now entirely mainstream. It wasn't such a stretch to make it go.