As in, Twitter, the digerati-popular and equivalently lauded/derided “micro-blogging” service. Sort of reminds me a bit of Douglas Adams‘ description of the Belcerebon people of Kakrafoon: a race whose enlightened civilisation was reduced to a gibbering wreck due to an intergalactic sentence passed on their world such that instead of being thoughtful and contemplative they instead had to talk endlessly and constantly about every miniscule thought & bit of trivia that popped into their brains. By providing people with the ability to express themselves in a maximum format of 140 characters, the brains behind Twitter have provided the human race with a medium for doing just that – although unlike Kakrafoon, we’re unlikely to be hosting a rock concert so loud that it reverses global warming.
So the interesting* thing that’s happened in the last couple of days on Twitter is that, in the ever increasing gravitation toward the service by celebrities (Obama, Britney, MC Hammer, and the lovely and amazing Stephen Fry are all users/enthusiasts), the newest arrival on the block is allegedly comedian, actor and panel game dynamo (and of course, Numberwang architect), David Mitchell. He claims to be having difficulty with getting used to the short message format, and then goes on to theorise about identity theft… Shortly following however other people tweeted (the past tense of the verb meaning “to post something to Twitter”) that this David Mitchell was an imposter, providing an alternative for the REAL Mitchell’s Twitter presence.
Yes, this is what passes for excitement around here.
* I use the term with reservation