Twitter: I don't get it


So what's with this twitter business anyway? Why would I want to have a conversation with someone online? Maybe I'm missing something here, but what's the point?

Having said that, I'd love a silver bullet that makes me rich, popular, and famous - Merlin Mann seems to have seen the darker side to the spree of social networking websites that have graced our browser screens of late. Jeff Atwood asks us "how many online identities do we need?", and I have to agree with him. You may have noticed the LinkedIn link on this page - I use that simply because a lot of my former colleagues are present, and it's a useful tool to keep in touch.

However, I suspect that those exact reasons are at the very heart of most social networking sites. So why are there so many?

Perhaps it's vanity - everyone wants the world to know how many friends they have...