Twitter always reminded me of my dog, squirming around, tail wagging -- demanding a little more attention than I felt I could give. But when I devoted a few minutes of attention, it was usually worthwhile.
The Internet-based status-update service has been all the rage of late, with master Twitterers receiving awards, celebrity journalists pledging their allegiance and a research paper showing just who uses the micro-blogging system that delivers news morsels, 140 characters at a time.
Twitter -- -- will never be the New Yorker or even the Associated Press, but it's another window into a world that I find I'm liking, despite myself.
A fellow reporter suggested sometime after Twitter was born 2 1/2 years ago that Times staffers should all sign up -- the better to feed info to our readers if the paper's website temporarily crashed in, say, an earthquake.
We haven't had to test that emergency backstop yet, so I mainly used my account to post links to my columns @latrainey.
In terms of collecting information, I didn't feel much need, what with the deluge already available on my computer via old-school news sites, blogs, e-mail and RSS feeds. Still, I couldn't help notice that the Twitter brand kept cropping up, particularly in emergencies.
Last May, victims of the giant earthquake in China used Twitter and other status-update systems to deliver some of the earliest news reports. The same occurred when wildfires roared across Southern California. And one of the first photos of US Airways Flight 1549, downed in the Hudson River last month, were posted on Twitter by a ferryboat passenger.
So how does Twitter work?
Once you sign up on the home page, which is simple, you can begin to file micro reports, known as tweets. You can also follow as many (or few) of the site's estimated 6 million registered users as you like, their postings scrolling out, chronologically, in one long string.
I'm mostly yolked to my laptop, but others read or post updates from their cellphones or BlackBerrys. Twitter's search function helps you find those who might write about topics of interest -- say Westminster dog show results or Simon's latest beat down on "American Idol."
The site's entry prompt -- "What are you doing?" -- implies it's merely a repository for the banal, narcissistic drivel that chokes social networking sites. But many Twitter users have pushed well past daily minutiae (i.e. "I love my new Crocs"), as demonstrated by last week's first Shorty Awards.
