Twitter, the microblog and meme of the moment, allows people to send short messages via cellphone or internet about what they are doing at any given moment.

Two real world examples:

hietahh

Swimming in the canal with my two dogs and three cats! Awesome!
less than 5 seconds ago from web

oyvind

Messing in Terminal. Urk. Feel like an elephant in a porcelain store…
less than 5 seconds ago from im

It appears to be a simplified version of Jaiku, a company I wrote about that gives mobile phones the ability to transmit “rich presence”.

People using Jaiku can know where their friends are (by knowing which cell tower they are near), what they are doing (if phone is on “silence” they are busy), who is with them (by looking at the bluetooth devices nearby) and what time they last used the phone (and for how long).

A round-up of views on The Editor’s Weblog concludes that there may be a Twitter application for media presenting user experiences as a new form of user generated content.

My problem with this is that so much Twitter information is trivial an uninteresting except to the few people directly involved.

How many people really want to know when I am getting on my bike to ride to work?

Cross posted to IHT MetaMedia blog

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