A little over a month ago I finally gave in and started playing around with Twitter.

I like how thin and open Twitter is. There is no proscribed way of how it works. Some people post what they’re doing, some post thoughts, others simply reply to other’s posts. Posts, usually called “tweets”, are limited to 140 characters, a hard limit that enforces brevity.

Starting out feels awkward. At first, it can feel like looking in at the super-clique — except that you’ve been gagged and no one can see you. Most of the people I’m following I’ve met briefly or know online. Most of them aren’t following me. I don’t dwell on it. At least initially, I’ve decided to follow anyone who follows me, except spammers. So far I haven’t culled my list.

After a few days, it starts to get interesting. At times it seems like nothing more than a rolling IM status message. After a week it starts to feel like it should have always been there.

I’ve found Twitter to be a surprising motivator. That probably has something to do with my inherent belief that I’m never doing enough. I want to seem busy, so I have to get busy. Or busier. There is a water-cooler quality to Twitter which is nice when your office is largely virtual.

There’s another interesting thing, probably a result of how transitory messages are; people often post quick little links to their newest blog posts or whatever. I tried that and was astonished at how many clickthroughs I got.

Having previously referred to Twitter as “a spam-free pub-sub channel for direct communication,” Dave Winer also posted this very effective description:

[Twitter] is a network of users, with one kind of relationship: following. I can follow you, and you can follow me. Or I can follow you and you don’t follow me. Or you can follow me, and I don’t follow you. Or neither of us follow each other. Pretty simple. Just arrows at either or both ends of the line, or no line at all. There are no labels on the arcs.

That really sums it up. Feel free to follow me, I’ll happily return the favor.

If you’re on a Mac, I highly recommend getting the free Twitterific from IconFactory.