Last week, I had a rather enjoyable lunch with Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for Amazon Web Services (aws blog). He mentioned twitter as his way of “broadcasting” updates to his colleagues and acquaintances about what he’s up to.

It’s a one-to-many way to broadcast what’s up in your life, and keep people informed about you simply and easily. In good “web 2.0″ fashion (in my opinion), Twitter is all about doing a very simple thing–giving interested people status updates–very, very well.

• When you sign up for Twitter, you’ll get a personal website URL where people can read your updates.
• You can then find other people you know, like Jeff, and add them to your friends list (so you will be notified of their updates).
• Browsing around, you’ll find interesting people you may want to keep up with. Even Lord Vader is using twitter these days to keep in touch.
• From there, see how you want to be notified:
• Online
• Email
• Instant Messaging (seems like all platforms are supported)
• Cell Phone/SMS
• Got a website, or blog? Add one of the badges, like the one over there on my sidebar.
• And, you can hack with their API, if you’re a real geek.
• There’s also commands you can SEND to twitter via IM or SMS if you want to do things to your network:
• Turn updates on and off
• “nudge” people (or everyone) for an update
• Invite people to join your network

Social Media Club calls this “EM” or Everywhere Messaging (as opposed to “IM” or Instant Messaging), and they believe it will change how we keep up with and keep in touch with our associates, coworkers, and friends.

EM… has tremendous potential for solving some of the biggest problems I face on a daily basis, and have been thinking about for over a decade, most especially the idea of annotating the world around us and sharing key [insights] about what is happening and what I see as the important matters of the day.

Bottom-Line:

• Get a few people on twitter (maybe you and your super-hip, cool-cat friends) and use it to ping each other with what’s going on.
• Try it with your co-workers, or a that hyper-brainstorming group you hang out with.
• Put the badge on your blog so people know what you’re up to before calling you needlessly.

…Then, you’ll see why it’s such a good tool. At least, Dan Cederholm and I think so.

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