A Contemplation Of Twitter

I don't twitter, and I'm not planning on it (although you never know what'll happen) but it certainly is a phenomenon these days and one that seems to be at least pushing ubiquity in the online political world.

Right off the bat the most useful twitter site I've seen so far is the Muck Rack, an aggregation of all the journalists currently on twitter (primarily from major news outlets), the page has a nice break down by outlet as well and if you know someone who they're missing, they'll add them. You can use the page like a big rss reader which seems quite useful for monitoring the press and keeping an eye on breaking news these days.

Since we're starting with what I like about twitter the single coolest application of the service that I've heard about is a London group that has outfitted bakeries so that they can effortlessly send out twitter alerts when fresh baked goods are coming out of the oven.

The coolest after the fact twitter usage is this awesome interactive map of twitter topics during the superbowl.

On the political front here are a couple of interesting takes on the current twitter rage (I'm sure there are more out there, let me know if I missed something really good)...

Ezra Klein on why Congress twitters but doesn't blog

e.politics tackles the metaphysics of twitter and looks into its use, tool or strategy?

Lets take a video interlude and let current explain twitter (warning extreme satire alert):

(via EK)

But seriously even Roland Hedley has jumped, perhaps too forcefully, on the bandwagon.

Which does beg the question as too the difficulty in knowing for sure exactly who it is you're following on twitter. The Real Shaq is indeed the real Shaq.

Ezra Klein and Farhad Manjoo have both offered takes on whether you need to join twitter or risk being left behind and looked at the public / private issues that surround all of our online social interaction these days.

In a sign that twitter is indeed huge, one of its founders was on Oprah this week. This probably means that twitter will only get bigger.

As such Slate is on the lookout for the next big thing...