Twitter and Linked in are both SM networking tools. However they are VERY DIFFERENT. If you are using Twitter how are you using this tool. I find that it becomes MUCH more personal and I enjoy it much more than Facebook, for the instant connection and brevity.
I am interested in how others are using Twitter, please share.

Kim,

Although Twitter has about 6mil users, and everyone from CNN to members of Congress to Kindergartners are Tweeting regularly I don't think that it has yet found its real value, nitch or eventual purpose. At the moment it's still Web 2.0 Social Networking / Media hyperbole [imo]. The problem that it is directed at which is filling the communications between E-mails and Blogs (as an example) is "nice" but that can't be the "grand" purpose? That had to be the “tease” or the “hook”.

Twitter has put limits on the # of followers you can have because the "purpose" is being mis-used for advertising. This is what happens when the business model is just “sign up”, the users always figure out how to commercialize the platform and turn it into the wild wild West in the process, the “honor system” rarely works for the masses.

Twitter needs to add some more features to give it a major jump in it's usefulness, but they are slammed with the problem of having 6mil users and with that many users just changing the position of a button on the display can wreak havoc on the user population. It’s a rock and a hard place in terms of continual improvements, albeit a nice one to have.

Twitter is probably a few years a way before a true commercial aspiration crops up, but before then Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or maybe a .Gov institution (in an attempt to nationalize the internet or that space between Blogs and Emails) will purchase Twitter for a few billion.

I use Twitter for a few different purposes, but mostly to communicate to a group of interested parties - outbound communications. Not the other way around.

Good Luck,
Peter
April 2009