Nice Article on Twitter

Hiawatha Bray, the Globe's excellent tech reporter, has a wonderful article on Twitter with a review of a number of Twitter Tools, here. Bray admits to originally finding Twitter boring and pretty lame. Interestingly, he says the Nielsen ratings service says 60% of new Twitter users have the same reaction. But he figured it out and is here to tell you some of the things it's good for. In Bray's words,

Twitter accesses the wisdom of crowds.

That's rather a high-flown way of saying what I find good about Twitter, I guess. The folks I follow on Twitter have introduced me to wonderful new tools, interesting books, cool music and websites I never would have found on my own. I have gotten news items vastly quicker than I would have otherwise (gee -- blogging anybody?). And sometimes, I get links to some really inspiring, entertaining or snarky blog posts that I would never have gotten to otherwise.

Bray goes on to explain and review TweetDeck, Twitterfall (which I had never seen), Tweetbeep, Tweetcube, and Linksocial. Read the Bray article! He finishes up noting that a research firm shows that Twitter is most popular among users between the ages of 45 to 54. Oh Noes! I thought I was being young and hip; instead I am in the heart of the demographic. Ah well... Bray's always worth reading.

Twitter logo theme from gorillathemes.com