Twitter is not a fad.

twittering is a odd thing, very meta tags with no application yet

I understand that it satifies people's need to be heard and to communicate, but it is more about "look at me" rather than "talk with me", and that's why it doesn't appeal to me.

The fact that reply to posts is functionality that has crept in just indicates to me that it will ultimately turn into some kind of threadable chat environment.

I may be misiing the point.

@DeWe - I thought the same thing before using it, but it's a good non-invasive transparency mechanism. There are other "talk with me" mechanisms to accomplish that goal, and in fact, I've been IM'ed shortly after a tweet to discuss something more.

OK, so you think it's useful as a broadcast medium for initiating conversations elsewhere.

I see the value in one to many messaging and it's certanly quicker and dirtier than Facebook at this. Facebook I find too much of a crap push.

I don't however think it's got a lot on a simple forum or group model, personally. The thing has momentum because it's become a trend, obviously.

nobody wants to invent the missing link

The missing link is a moving target. Even social networking junkies have polarizing opinions on every new communications medium.

Extra Sensory Perception - that's where the gold lies.

Twitter itself might come and go, but I think the social network based "idle chit-chat" idea will continue on. Twitter is nice if you don't think of it like other more traditional forms of communication. It has a lower bar than email and is more unabashedly broadcasty than IM. It's a nice way to "overhear" the crap that people are doing. Occasionally there's something truly interesting or useful, but for the most part it's just low level noise that I only pay partial attention to. As long as I'm aware of that and apply the same reasoning to my own updates, I find it useful.

Good points. Better user configurable content filters would be useful, in that case; to filter out the noise.