September 4, 2008 9:39PM

A-Twitter Over Twitter

By Liz Claman

Back in June, I went to Silicon Valley to interview the hottest of the new-media and alternative-energy leaders and one of my favorite segments was with the gang at Twitter.  Don’t have a clue as to what Twitter is? You need to know, because soon it’s going to be all that anyone’s talking about.  IM’ing and texting are yesterday’s news. Twitter is today’s hot hi-tech tool:  It’s a FREE micro-blogging service that allows you to send and read other people’s updates or ‘tweets’ on your cell-phone.  The catch is that “tweets,” or entries, can be only 140 characters long so you have to be creative, sharp, and SHORT.

I was very impressed with Twitter back then, and figured I’d follow up with the company in several months. But things quickly changed.

Sunday I was watching coverage of Hurricane Gustav and I read that updates on the worst damage could be had at GustavReporter, a Twitter profile.  Then, I’m flipping channels the other night and I see my old pal from WSVN in Miami Rick Sanchez on cable saying to viewers,  “Sign up to receive my Twitter entries!”  Then I notice that on one of the hottest media blogs, tvnewser.com, they’re re-printing some political tweets from both the Obama and McCain campaign sites which have set up their own Twitter profiles.  I immediately emailed my Silicon Valley producer Gary Kaye (I’m too uncool to Twitter at the moment because I’m on BlackBerry and don’t know how to download the necessary platform to Twitter-convert it) and said, “Book Twitter pronto!”

Today Jack Dorsey, the CEO and man widely credited with coming up with the Twitter concept, joined us on the 2 p.m. EDT show. David Asman and I were so impressed by the possibilities of this service, which now has more than 2 million registered users, in just two years since it got up and running.  The Los Angeles Fire Department put the technology to work during the October ‘07 wildfires and some corporations have begun to use it as a marketing tool.

Listen to Jack’s plans for the company (Anyone trying to buy it? Gonna take it public? Hmmm???) and decide whether you, too, should be Twittering. But no waxing poetic: you’ve got only 140 characters to make your point.

–Liz