The pitter patter of little Twitters

Unless you've been on the moon, passed out in a Opium den, or otherwise incapacitated and off the grid, you've probably heard about Twitter, Jaiku, or a number of other similar start-up services.

Labelled 'micro-blogging' apps by some, 'group IM' or 'push messaging' by others, these apps let you build/join social networks and then post little tidbits of your life to them.

I'm torn. For things like conferences, where you may have a network of people sitting in conflicting sessions, trying to hook up for dinners/parties, etc, these seem like a killer app. For the rest of my life they seem like self-induced info-pollution.

Anyhow, if you are curious, this March post by Danah Boyd (inspired by use of Dodgeball and Twitter at SXSW) is a great piece on the topic, discussing pros & cons, and giving some fascinating perspective of the use of these apps (and social tech in general) by teens. A sampling:

"The biggest challenge with teens is that they do not have all-you-can-eat phone plans. Over and over, the topic of number of text messages in one’s plan comes up. And my favorite pissed off bullying act that teens do involves ganging up to collectively spam someone so that they’ll go over their limit and get into trouble with their parents"