David Carr writes an excellent piece on the benefits of Twitter in yesterday's Week In Review. Carr hits on many the reasons that I'm on Twitter.
I follow some of the virtual friends that I've made through the blogs. Very few of my real friends are on it. However, I mostly use Twitter to follow people that don't know me, but are very plugged in — people that are two steps ahead of me on the breaking news and topics of the day. I follow key bloggers and reporters, and get a ten minute lead time about blog posts that are going to come up. I can learn about "the hot topic" before it actually happens.
Like Carr, I have found it useful to use these people to tell me what I should read first. Blogs used to serve this function, but it has gotten so hard to skim everything in my Google Reader. Twitter is a shortcut.
I also love the sarcasm and the terse banter of Twitter. Each tweet is loaded with content. Irrelevant words must be deleted to fit into the character count.
Now that I've got my iPhone, I log in every half hour or so to make sure that I don't miss anything. This suburban housewife has a front row seat on the events of the day. The chattering class is tied even closer together.
Apt. 11d 