As I write this, Twitter is dead. Not just down with the usual overusage whale or twittery bird, but completely dead as in their home page won't even come up.

This begs the question of how useful the service really is when it seems to spend so much time being down instead of up. Over on Men with Pens, there's a lengthy discussion going on about just that subject.

I've been using Twitter since my initial post about how I didn't get it. I like it well enough now. I don't use it all the time or even every day, but it was recently #2 on my list of driving traffic to my site (it only recently fell to #3 behind StumbleUpon), so in that respect it's been a boon. I also like the quick interaction it provides with others. However, when it's down, it's down, and not of much use to anyone.

One solution for when Twitter is down and you still want to twit is Twiddict. Think of Twiddict as an offline version of Twitter. Ahhh, maybe that's n... [More]

Last week I blogged about how I just didn't get Twitter. To put it plainly, I didn't see the point.

As I write this now, I have to retract my initial opinion at least partially. I'm still not 100% convinced it's the next best social medium, but I'm coming around. I started tweeting since I wrote that last post about Twitter and, I have to say, I'm marginally hooked.

Is it fun? Yeah, a little. Exciting? Ah, not really. Interesting? Yeah, it is actually. Informative, too, because people aren't telling me about what they had for lunch, they're passing out links to useful software information, tips on how to make better use of Twitter, and there's this guy who does inning-by-inning updates of the San Francisco Giants games (I've been a Giants fan for about 30 years now).

My advice: don't be like me--don't knock Twitter until you've tried it.

If you've already jumped on the Twitter Bandwagon or are just getting started... [More]

8/3/08 Update: OK, OK. Since having written this post, I think I've "gotten" Twitter. In fact, I'm on it and loving it. Follow me if you want.

I follow a number of professional bloggers who give various forms of advice regarding social interaction, driving people to your site, and just having a presence. Outlets such as MySpace or Facebook (which I don't really use but given how slow and obnoxious MySpace can be I'm thinking of using my account more) are great, but they're fairly static. Sure, they allow you to make comments or write blog entries, but those entries are meant to exist for hours, days, weeks, months, or even years and longer. In the case of blog entries, brevity is not always paramount.

Enter Twitter.

You have just 140 words to tell the world what you're doing, thinking, make a comment on something important or silly, or just about anything else. Though there is a word limit per 'twit', you can make such comments as o... [More]