Edythemighty (dot) com

Here's a copy-paste of a comment I left on an article on Slate about Twitter. The overall idea is applicable to all microblogs, but I kept it Twitter-centric because the article was Twitter-centric. Certainly, you could expand on this so much more, especially if you added SMS notifications to identi.ca groups....but that's another topic for another time.

Starting off, I'd like to say Twitter isn't my preferred
microblogging platform, but yes as you say, since it's the one in the
public eye, might as well use it in this example.

Why should I twitter? Why shouldn't you?

Why
does everyone assume Twitter/microblogging = "I'm watching the season
finale of House" o "I'm taking a dump that could sink a U-Boat!"?

Twitter
asks you "What are you doing?" so on the surface, it might seem that
this IS what Twitter is for, and in a way it is. Now, other platforms
which I consider more mature and that drive more community involvement
include Jaiku, and Identi.ca, which is an open source clone, but let's
not deviate. The author can look into identi.ca when time is available.

What
do I do with Twitter if not say "omg i saw a monkey!"? Use it however
you like! Certainly, it is a bit difficult to track replies, socommunity involvement requires the use of special tools, twitter
clients, to make sense of the noise....BUT...Twitter itself is a
community tool, and the community will use it however they find it most
helpful.

Example: I'm in a rather loose community of Twitter
users who dub ourselves the Twittericans. Catchy, isn't it? Why?
Because we're all Puerto Ricans who happens to use Twitter. How do we
use this tool, this "twitter"? We coordinate meetups, referred to as
"tweetups" (yes, i think it's stupid too, but it's a way to
distinguish). The value of Twitter is in the large amount of tools
available for it. I can check Twitter anywhere, in a large number of
ways. From the standard web interface you, the author, showed in that
crappy thumbnail, to several clients for the desktop, to clients for
smartphones, and finally, and perhaps most importantly, though SMS. We
can coordinate by allowing SMSes to reach us from only specific users,
those usually in charge of organizing these meetups. "But, you have
email if you need to coordinate with a large amount of users" or
"Facebook events" as some other commenters have mentioned. Or just shut
up and call that person or send them an SMS directly. Sure, I could do
all that, however, I would have to plug in each number, and some
companies or cellphones greatly limit that. With Twitter it's just
"Tweetup April 20th @ Hard Rock" and boom, we done.

Of course,
this is just one of its uses, for people who are local to each other,
and can set their profiles to private if they so wish to make the
tweetups even more secret, eh? Perhaps secret is not the right word,
but you understand....keep in the *community*. That's just one aspect
of the Twittuhs, ladies and gents, and sure, I could go on, but I'm
pretty ADD as it is. Go ahead and reply, flame me, or whatever, but
that's one of the ways I use it, and it has its value for me.