Twitter N Fritter

The New York Times calls Twitter "one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet." The question is, can Twitter be called a productive use of time or a huge waste of the same?

Twitter, a free service, allows you to post short, 140-character messages on your current activities. As Twitter.com states, "you can stay hyper-connected to your friends and always know what they're doing." There are two scenarios under which you could use Twitter: Personal or Business. Under the personal scenario, you can tell all your friends who have no life away from their computer that your dog just threw up, you had pizza for breakfast, or some other life-changing bit of information.

The first question that pops in my mind is "Why would I want to do that?" I don't want all my friends to know every single boring thing I did in a day's time, especially the stupid stuff. I own a business, for crying out loud. Why should I Twitter when I could actually do some work and generate revenue? And if I need a break from work, I need to actually get up and walk away from my computer. Otherwise, it's not much of a break. Your body needs to change positions occasionally.

Under a Business scenario, you can update colleagues and/or customers on your schedule or the fact that you're running late for a meeting. But there are already plenty of desktop and online apps that allow you to keep others updated on your schedule. And if you're running late for a meeting, isn't calling someone and apologizing for your tardiness the more polite thing to do?

Sorry folks, but my conclusion is that Twitter is a huge waste of time if used for personal communication. If it's used for business communication, then it's impolite and downright rude--and it's still a waste of time.