Tweets ‘n Twits

The revolution will be Twittered (in 140 characters or less).

It’s so ironic, praising the coolness of Twitter on an old school blog like this, with manicured images and aggregated content, designed for prime time viewing on Safari and Internet Explorer. That was so, like, 2008.

The demand for leaner, faster-paced Web content is more than neural. Now, the web’s been stripped down to its dendrites through mini-blog formats like Tumblelog and even more micro-minimally, Twitter — whiplash-fast, the closest thing to mental telepathy. Twitter makes economic sense, too.

America is wising up to a fleecing by cell phone companies. So say activists critical of mega-markups for mini-messages by Big Cellular.

The Consumerist says Verizon text messages are priced 4,876% above the company’s other cell data services. TechCrunch places AT&T’s texting tab at $1,310 per megabyte.

And though some Twitter through their cell phones, sending and receiving tweets as SMS messages that can carry heavy tariffs, many others use mobile device web interfaces including iPhone applications, paying nothing for unlimited tweeting beyond their Internet connection, never sweating monthly message limits. For its part, Twitter swears it will never charge users.

Beyond the bucks, aren’t we simply over pajama’d no-life bloggers? Or worse — being one? Twitter lets you broadcast micro-bulletins known as “tweets” from a code-free interface as simply and quickly as sending a text message — but with interactivity, linkage and tweet-anywhere mobility. With Twitter, we can blog-zapp everyone in our posse, on the fly, from the party, and totally free. Twitter as text message-killer? Yup — and quite possibly the death of blogging as we know it.

Anyway, what can’t be said in 140 characters — Twitter’s max message length? A just-released Twitter Style Guide from a San Francisco word design collective will “help you be more effective when communicating in small spaces.” Good! We’re talking seriously seminal lingo, as disciplined as haiku.

Despite Twitter’s allure, not everyone’s convinced there’s much cosmic significance in knowing what a former high school classmate is having for lunch, though Twitter can be a great tool for journalists.

Reporter Charles Feldman is using Twitter to hunt down interviewees for an upcoming story. Need a quick answer to a question? Tweet your best sources, all at once. The Los Angeles Times is hip to Twittering — I love the inside scoops and newsroom chatter from its City Desk feed. L.A.’s TV and radio stations are another story, slow to embrace Twittering as a way to stay hooked up with viewers and listeners between tune-ins. Go figure.

Tweetie is the best iPhone app I’ve found for mobile Twittering. Among its features, the ability to tune in on every tweet originating nearby — including total strangers.

At the 2km range, I’ve monitored real time goings-on at local pubs, reviews of an R&B band as it played, the location of a mysterious fireworks display, and news that Ikea was simply too mobbed to bother driving down to Carson. Diablo Cody and John Cleese are among Twittering celebs who occasionally fire off fun-blurbs. Barack Obama was a Twitterer — until presidency ate up his tweet time.

But then there’s 1indination, aka Rebecca, a “Podcasting Cyborg Odd UberGeek Nocturnal Goddess” and whose Twittering compulsion is legend here within a 2km radius of Venice Beach where Twitter is often all Rachel, all the time. Does she never sleep??? You go, girl.

At least she’s not pitching get-rich-quick scams. Spam is a growth sector at Twitter through tools like TWPLY, a service that forwards tweets as email (along with a helping of crapmail). TweetTornado games Twitter through relentless automation, building mega communities of spam victims sucked in by vanity and phony avatar pix of awesome babes. (“She’s hot! If she’s following me, I gotta follow her!”) Gotcha! Cue the porn ads.

Twitter and its followers are fiercely anti-spam, policing posts and quickly 86ing offenders. Still, as Jeff Goldblum liked to say in Jurassic Park, “Life will find a way.” So will spammers.

Where’s it all heading? Despite a raging recession, venture capitalists pumped $35 million into Twitter on February 13, even though the service said it didn’t need the money and has yet to raise a dime in revenue. Still, Twitter is here with a million-plus users and growing faster than fungus, perhaps just waiting to be bought out by Google.

Aren’t we all?

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