Twitter: Fad or fabulous? It's in your hands

It was bound to happen sooner or later, a post about Twitter. (Follow me here)

In recent months, Twitter has been heralded and criticised all across the cybersphere, and little more so than in Blogs.

Opinions are divided, as they often are, over it's value and whether it is anything more than the latest 'thing'.

As Facebook was the phenomenon of 2008 (and to a point even the year before that), Twitter has conjured a media firestorm, with everyone from Jonathan Ross to Oprah Winfrey Twittering away.

Recently cyber-history was made as Aston Kutcher became the first Twitterer to get over a million followers (shortly followed by CNN).

But what exactly does it all mean?

For those of you who haven't been bitten by the twitterbug, Twitter sees you posting answers to the question "What are you doing?" and connecting yourself to other users to see what they are up to as well.

With the post limit at 140 characters, these so called 'micro-blogs' are limited, but often contain urls to interesting sites or news stories, or, in the case of QI Master Stephen Fry, simply the day-to-day interesting goings on in their lives.

You can also reply to people's posts, or 'tweets' as they are known' and send direct messages to them.

Peter Schwartz of the internet newspaper The Huffington Post today voiced his views on Twitter. You can read them here, but if you're too lazy for that the gist of it is that he's not a fan. He feels it's been over-hyped, no doubt by blog posts like this one, and is only a passing fancy which people will soon grow tired off, and far from the "transpersonal communications organism" it's founders are claiming it to be.

Despite Facebook and Google both reported to be trying to acquire Twitter, the site, according to Schwartz, is yet to make money:

"While no one is suggesting Twitter can support the $15 billion valuation that Facebook received for its Microsoft investment several years ago, the mania surrounding Twitter surely indicates the Web 2.0 frenzy has probably peaked." Peter Schwartz

Like many things though, Twitter is what you make of it. On the most basic level it's just a website, but if you involve yourself in it you can connect yourself to people you may never have had the privilage to meet. While it's easy to be bogged down in the spam of people's everyday lives, there are some interesting things to be found on there and through there, it's just up to you to find them.

Is it a fad? Perhaps for some people, but for others it's a serious exchanging of information, and right now it's not going anywhere but up.

Now here's a few of my personal favourites:

1) Xbox 360 Game Left 4 Dead re-enacted
2) 10 Gaming Characters on Twitter
3) Terrible Twilight Fan Art
4) Anything tweeted by qikipedia
5) Classic reply to one of my latest tweets about now being unemployed from VividEphany:

"@James_Parry Sorry to hear that you were laid off. Keep your chin up. This might be an opportunity in disguise. If you need help, I'm here" - Just knowing that makes me feel safer...thanks