First, I must apologize to Twitter. Back in May, I questioned the merit of the service in my post The “Echo Chamber” Reverb. At the time I promised to reserve complete judgment until I used the service. So since that time one of two things have happened, I have fully come to understand the value of Twitter by using it everyday OR I, too, am writing this post from inside the echo chamber. I understand these are not mutually exclusive so perhaps both are true.
Anyway, I could be as bold to say that Twitter is one of the most valuable services to emerge in the last couple of years. Is it simple? Yes. But it serves a purpose. You can keep track of friends and colleagues. You can group message. You can lurk in an acceptable way (i.e. where society will not consider you a stalker). It serves as quite a serviceable micro-blogging tool and can be utilized a personal PR and promotion engine with short-URL. (See Paul Kedrosky and Jeremiah Owiyang as two examples.)
To this day, I am still finding myself trying to convince others about the value of Twitter. In most cases, those individuals have never used it or refuse to. To them, I can only suggest to give it a try. And it is not right for everyone but it is right for me. So, Twitter, I apologize.