Twitxr is an example of a site competing with Twitter, while TwitPic attempts to deliver pictures within Twitter. One interesting byproduct of this is that Twitter users frequently encounter links to TwitPic while using Twitter, which may help boost the growth of that service.

A Work In Progress

I've noticed small refinements to the Twitter.com interface over the last few months, a feat that seems incredible given the simplicity of the concept. Biz Stone says that what I've observed are "updates towards a better user experience," and suggests that there is "plenty more room for improvement in that area."

For the most part, the folks at Twitter seem content to watch how people use the service and use that a springboard for adding new features. The form of directed messaging known as "@replies" came into being that way, for example. Users self-organized around using @username to address each other, and it eventually became a formal part of Twitter, which automatically directs @replies to the appropriate users stream of tweets.

Another feature that seems to be growing in popularity that is not yet adopted by Twitter officially is #hashtags, which enable tweets on a given theme to be aggregated.

Difficult to Explain, but Easy to Understand

Twitter is about the life that happens between blog posts and emails, say Lee and Sachi LeFever at CommonCraft, and they created Twitter In Plain English (aka "Twitter in 150 Seconds") to explain.

Others have a slightly different take on Twitter, with Pete Cashmore of Mashable suggesting that Twitter was the 2007 paradigm for cat-blogging.

Meryl Evans suggests that "Twitter doesn't work if you lurk, post updates, and do nothing else." She also offers seven tips to a good Twitter experience.

I didn't think I had room in my life for yet another web service, and indeed my first effort to use Twitter foundered. Then I began to use it as a "mini-blog," a place to record the notes too short or personal for a full-length article. I made an effort to "follow" friends and acquaintances from around the web and plunged right in. I quickly found that what seemed trivial or pointless from the outside became an indispensable part of my online life.