The company behind this is Particle, the Justin Timberlake-funded microapp development shop, dedicated to creating “massively small” products, an interesting concept in today’s environment. There’s a great write-up about the company and what they do on Read-Write- Start which goes into what they’re all about, but also how they plan to turn this into a viable business. The interesting thing, to me, is that it’s created a whole new genre of micro-vlogging that may do to YouTube what Twitter did to blogging: drive concentrated content to our ever-hungry lust for information. But it’s doing it in a prettier fashion (well, prettiness is in the eye of the beholder).

In the meantime, here’s me:

Come join the fun!

Image details: Festival of the Winds served by picapp.com

I think I quite like brightkite. It has a clean interface and seems to be “smoother” than other micro-blogging platforms. The one thing it doesn’t seem to have for me is any sort of momentum. There are too few people I know on it and because of that reason, I don’t really pop in that often. Because I don’t pop in often, I don’t have many friends .. do you see where I’m going with this.

One thing I love is the geo-location facilities built into it, which is a feature which is bound to increase in popularity, partly because it’s real information and partly because people are just nosy. What are your thoughts on brightkite?

If you’re on brightkite: here’s my brightkite profile. If not, drop me a comment and I’ll send you an invitation

You’ll notice a whole mixture of different content, from news to weather reports, to friend updates. And if you’re not following me on Twitter yet, start now. I found Twitter a bit like putting money into savings accounts, the more you put in, the more you can take out!

P.S. The only problem with my sidebar is that I’m really conscious that I don’t want to clutter it with too many things. What do you think, is it overdone ?

I love the simplicity of the video, especially as it has been particularly tricky explaining to people just why I’ve found Twitter so useful. The video is a starting point really, and doesn’t go into why Twitter has such a lasting appeal: quick access to information and social interaction.

I’ll be pointing a number of friends at the video. Explaining why Twitter has been so useful for me is a bit like trying to explain fractional ownership to a 2-year old. The explanation of how microblogging fills in the spaces between blog posts and emails is a particularly useful analogy and it’s been a great medium for me to keep in touch with loads of people without getting too distracted from what I was doing. Maybe it’s because Tweets can be absorbed in a single glance, just like checking the time on your watch. Now I just need to get more friends on it (Sherrilynne .. I mean you)

It’s been interesting to see how the blogosphere has picked up on it and see the clip echoed here, here and here. And if you’re on Twitter, you can follow me here.

I’ll be talking about a service soon that works on a decentralised model, but I can’t speak about it right now, so let’s leave it at that.

Back to Twitter, I agree with Scott above that the real value (to me) of Twitter is the collection of people I follow and conversations I have with them. I didn’t catch on to Twitter straight away, but now, thanks to TwitterFox and other Twitter tools I have amassed, it’s become a pretty good way to keep in touch with news and people .. to an extent that has surpassed my use of RSS to keep up with news and blogs (which is really scary). It has also reduced my IM time to a certain extent, in that it helps me feel connected with people “around” me in a more, albeit in a more voyeristic sense.

It’s also interesting to see people’s feelings about Twitter. Some people have just accepted it. some totally refuse to embrace it and some claim that it is too geeky. What about you? Do you Twitter? If you do, follow me here.

It’s an interesting journey .. wonder where it will end up …

• TwitterFox: This was the one that made the difference. It’s a plugin for FireFox that sits in your system tray and pops up a message when one of the people you’re following sends a message. This means you can keep up to date with your mates without having to leave the page you’re on. It also lets you Tweet straight from the plugin. Indispensible!
• Twitter Application for Facebook: The main thing this does is update your Facebook status with your last Tweet. It also has a page where you can see what your friends are doing, but I don’t use that. Great way to consolidate your status updates in one place.
• Twessenger: The other place that has my status is MSN Messenger. This plugin for Messenger updates your status with you latest tweet. Again, striving towards unified status updates.

And there you have it, three utilities that have changed the way I interact on the web and taken me back to microblogging. If you’re on Twitter, follow me here. Do you have any related tools you use everyday?