Twitter = Asparagus

When I was young, my father would always try to get me to eat asparagus.

"I don't like asparagus, Daddy."

"How do you know? You've never tried it."

"I just know. I don't like the way it smells."

I don't like the way Twitter smells, but I figured I would at least do some research into it.

For those of you who have spent the last year or so under a rock, Twitter is a microblogging service. Every post must be 140 characters or less. Everyone and their granny is tweeting now, it seems. Celebrity Twitter is supposed to be really interesting. Just ask Conan O'Brien.

There is no real limit to the content you can post. Everything from the Iran elections to Kanye-bashing to your morning bowel movement is fair game, as long as it's not spam or porn (even that's not particularly well-policed).

Side note: A recent study found that 40% of tweets are "pointless babble".

You can set your account to either public or private, depending on if you want the world to know what you're doing or just your friends. If you see a tweet you like, you can RT, or re-tweet, it to share it with your "followers". You're not supposed to impersonate people, threaten people, infringe on anyone's copyright, or post people's private information.

There are approximately 3,421 Twitter apps on the iTunes App Store (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but there are still quite a few). Olly Farshi on The Apple Blog has done a far better job than I could of detailing some of the better Twitter iPhone apps, so here's a link to his blog post.

Are there any positive uses for Twitter? Maybe. Dell broadcasts deals on it; Walmart uses it to promote new products and give an inside look at life as a Walmart employee; Women's Health magazine uses it to link to articles they deem interesting and/or useful.

I still don't understand how using Twitter has any tangible benefit over more traditional methods (blog, email, etc.); to me, the only purpose Twitter serves is to speed up the decline in the world's collective attention span, communication abilities, and command of the written language.

Oh, and @aplusk: Really, we don't care. Seriously.

Quote of the Week:
"Twitter's down. Uh -- I don't know what Ashton Kutcher's having for lunch! I DON'T KNOW WHAT ASHTON KUTCHER'S HAVING FOR LUNCH!!! OH MY GOD, TWITTER'S DOWN!!! WHAT AM I GONNA DO?!" --Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien