You're in for a lot of revisions and re-writes.

There have been about four or five moments where I had Twitter figured out, only to have those assumptions challenged and shredded by experience.

The deceptive thing about Twitter is how it can be different things to different people, and how the size of your home-rolled community affects how you can and will use it.

Good luck, and you know where to find me if you have any questions.

This should be extremely interesting. I am out there and am now following you. :)

Ike,

I am very sure you're right. I'm going to take a chance and spend the day and write a column on my first thoughts and impressions. I will be SURE to include your thought here, however, in my piece. Not sure my life can withstand long-term Twitter participation—I ain't getting paid for no longitudinal study--but we'll see about that, too.

Susan, I don't think of you as a big social media enthusiast. What's your take on Twitter? What do you use it for?

David

Right off the bat (since I'm evaluating it too for potential applications) I can see where it would be useful to keep team members updated on breaking events.

Au contraire, David.

I gave Twitter a try once, and it didn't stick. I didn't see the eventual value, because I only saw the one facet.

On a given day, I can't tell you how I'm going to use Twitter. Sometimes to inspire, sometimes to be inspired, sometimes as a real-time focus group, sometimes to let off a little steam, sometimes to brainstorm, sometimes to take the collective temperature of the room, sometimes to see what is happening elsewhere...

Yes, it can be a time-sink. It can also save you a lot of time. I can't tell you how much of the current direction of Occam's RazR has been affected by Twitter. The subjects, the tone, the focus.

You can't dip a toe in the river and tell us how it tastes. (Unless you're a butterfly, which happens to have tastebuds on its feet, but now you're complicating things...)

Ike--

Understood. I CAN dip a toe in the river and tell you how it felt, however.

Okay, David, I've followed you on Twitter as much as I can stand for the rest of my life. I just can't deal with that much urgent self-involvement. (Twitter, not Murray.)

If I'm wrong, somebody please entice me back.

Craig: Why wouldn't it work just as well to EMAIL team members about breaking events?

Wait, Jane, you don't even know what I'm having for lunch! Or whether I was able to have a cat nap? For chrissakes!

David wrote: :"Twitter participation" but I had to do a double take because i thought you wrote "twitterpation," which my mother used to say all the time. Has anyone else heard twitterpated/twitterpation, and what does it mean? In context, I always assumed it meant "nervous and edgy," but now I wonder.

Once again, Eileen, you should Google before you speculate.

You asked for it. From Hitched Magazine:

"Twitterpation (noun): The rebirth and renewal of our sexual senses in the extremely finite time between the cold of winter and the sweltering heat of summer. As in, 'I’m in twitterpation.'"

More information than I'm comfortable thinking about in regard to my 76-year-old mother, but there you have it. Thanks, David.

"Confused by affection or infatuation." I had to double-check you, David, because like Eileen, my grandma and mom used that word a lot, and I thought it meant "rattled, shook up," something of that nature. Which apparently it does, only in the context of romance, so the rural Michigan take on twitterpation had morphed into something more general. But now I need to go have a look at Hitched Magazine, which is new to me, and sounds intriguing.

I tried to Twitter once, but got confused. But I wasn't in love (at least, not with Twitter), so apparently I was NOT twitterpated, just baffled yet again by technology. Sigh...

News flash from my wireless provider: "We do not have short code messaging available." No wonder Twitter never worked! But I'm sad--no minute to minute updates on David's naps, lunches or insights. I guess I'm just a little too far off the grid. Ah well.

Apparently none of you have ever watched "Bambi." Thumper was all twitterpated when, one spring, he met his girlfriend.

As far as Twitter goes, sorry, I have no curiosity or interest. I'll just keep up with you here, David.

Jane, email could certainly work, assuming you were always at your computer, always had your email client handy and had set up a distribution list with appropriate email addresses. If any one of these things isn't available your stuck.

With services like Twitter, you can access them anywhere you have an internet connection and since they are receiver-driven it frees you from having to remember or store lists of email addresses. Also, since these apps invariable have mobile integration, I could send updates to my team from my cell phone.

For example, I am sending this to you while in a doctor's office waiting for an appointment. In a few minutes I'll check my Twitter account. If you were following me I could send you an update without having to connect to my office network, log on, open Outlook, compose an email, look up your email address (or pick a distribution list) then send it to you.

Whew! That even sounds exhausting .

Reading all of the comments to this post has solidified in my mind what I think is wrong with Twitter (not to say that there aren't some ways it comes in handy, Craig): it encourages the trend of pretending that everything is urgent and that reactions must be immediate or they're too late. And that is a POWERFUL trend. Even on blogs--even on this sainted blog--if someone has a comment after the author has moved on to a new post, it usually means few people will read that comment (e.g., this comment).

Now deeply enmeshed in middle age, I find that it's almost always wise to stop and think before doing or saying anything. Most of today's electronic options pretend that thoughtfulness is not something that successful modern folks should even, well, contemplate.

A thoughtful post, Jane. And, approaching middle age myself, I'm just slow-paced enough to look back a post or two and read new comments!

I've just finished my piece about my day on Twitter, and I'll post here when it appears on Ragan.com.