I think I'm finally beginning to see what's useful in Twitter. It took awhile. There is still too many "I'm washing my dishes now", or "am working on a deadline" tweets for my taste. But there are some interesting things happening out there.

First, I am able to follow some pretty remarkable people, both local and national, who are tweeting about their areas of expertise [favorites: jowyang, cbensen, nprscottsimon]. I learn more about their thought processes and their observations about what's going in the world right now. There's no delay, less editing and less filters then in almost any other communication channel. I can comment back when I want to and sometimes get a direct response from them, someone who I'd never get a chance to talk to in the "real world." It must be something about the quickness or the newness of Twitter. People are still experimenting with it, so they haven't closed the portals yet.

The other thing I like about it is the ability to see reaction real time during an event. We've used Twitter at speaking events to get realtime audience feedback. I was glued to it during the election. Chris, my biz partner, was tweeting during the Super Bowl. In fact, check out the NYTimes interactive map of the tweets during the game. Notice that words related to the commercials/ads versus the game were most popular in Minneapolis until the 4th Quarter. I think Chris had something to do with that.

Twitter will never be something my mother will use, but it is one of the most interesting things going on in the world of communications right now. We're still experimenting with it. How it will evolve will be something to watch and tweet about [Find Us: Helmin7, Azul7, Verde7, CCortilet].