I came across this interesting anecdote of a bloggers's first 90 days on Twitter:

I “get” Twitter. I like the idea, I think there’s a lot of uses for the service, and I’m pretty happy with the feature set. I’ve found some people who are using Twitter in interesting ways, and two real-life friends also Twitter. When it’s good, Twitter can be a lot of fun.

On the other hand, using Twitter feels like shouting down a well most of the time. I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who’ve actually had any interaction with me on Twitter (including the friends). It’s hard to stay enthusiastic about something when you get so little feedback.

All in all, I’d give my first 90 days with Twitter a B. I’m not inclined to stop Twittering, but it’s in no danger of replacing my blog any time soon.

It's a reasonable assessment, though I have had better luck getting dialogue going.

But I don't know that Twitter is supposed to replace blogging, any more than IM is supposed to replace email or text-messaging is supposed to replace phone conversations.

Some things (e.g. a song recommendation) don't necessarily merit a blog post. Others (say, anything longer than 140 characters) don't fit into Twitter, literally or figuratively.

I believe these pairs of technologies complement each other. I've said before that everyone should have a blog, and I'll also say that everyone should have Twitter. Your thoughts, ideas and observations are interesting. Share them with others.

Over at Blogcritics, Ginger Haycox makes a strange off-hand remark about Twitter:

Then too, there are the social sites such as MySpace and Twitter which are further eroding the sense of community that blogs originally fostered. These “social media sites” look more like newspaper inserts for Wal-Mart, Sears or Kohl’s.

Barring a more fleshed-out explanation of why she dislikes Twitter, I am filing this one under the the subset of people who don't "get" it and therefore trash "it" (in this case, Twitter) as useless or even damaging.

First, she gives no indication that she actually used Twitter before dismissing it. Meanwhile, Eric Berlin, the Executive Producer of Blogcritics, gave it an honest try six months earlier and was sold: "The more I play with Twitter, I think it's a keeper."

Second, Twitter doesn't look like anything; it's a platform. It can appear in formats as varied as IM, cell phone text messages, your feed reader (e.g. Bloglines), a desktop client (e.g. Twitterrific) or the Twitter.com site itself. Twitter doesn't have an appearance.

Third, what sense of community did blogs originally foster and how does Twitter "erode" this, rather than provide a new avenue for connecting with other people?

Online communities, such as Usenet, bulletin boards and group sites like Slashdot, predate blogging by years or even decades.

But blogging provided another way for people to communicate with each other, and so does Twitter. Again, from Berlin's post:

At its essence — I've spent some time thinking about this — I think that Twitter is yet another shortcut to meeting the compelling need for people to express themselves and partake in the ever quickening Internet conversation. (emphasis mine)

Twitter provides a new form of community. You read what other people have to say. Other people read your updates. I have met new people, and learned more about old friends, via Twitter. In fact, it is a quintessential community site — without followers/following, it useless. The connections between us are Twitter'ss raison d'être.

So give it a shot, Ginger. I would be happy to introduce you to the vibrant Twitter community. You can find me at Twitter: josephgrossberg.

If you don't understand what the big deal is with Twitter, you're not alone.

Dick Costolo, creator of FeedBurner (which was purchased by Google for $100 million), didn't "get" Twitter for a while:

I remember the first time I saw Twitter and thought “I don’t get it”, and then somebody explained it to me and I thought “uh-huh. I don’t get it”, and then somebody explained it to me again, and I thought “Ah!... I don’t get it.” Only after I saw somebody using it in a way that I found valuable did I finally get it.

Me too. I'd heard of it for months before I got into it.

What doesn't help is the appearance of its front page. Until you have an account, it is a barrage of everyone's public updates. It was like being a psychic on a crowded subway car.

Even after that initial barrage, it seemed like blogging for people with ADD. Or a series of iChat status messages. Or a publicly-visible train of thought. Or time-delayed IM. (And it sort of is all of those.)

Yet here I am, four months and almost 2,000 updates later.

What was the segue for me? The social aspect. I found friends who used it and started following them. I'm only slightly more interested in what they had for lunch than in total strangers' noshing, but it was a start.

Before long I saw some more interesting things go by. I learned that there is midnight yoga on Capitol Hill and that the Department of Justice makes their employees use a crippled version of Internet Explorer. I saw some cool links. I saw one guy's father passed away and that a friend was interviewed by Fast Company magazine. I started using it as a non-disruptive way to communicate with my girlfriend throughout the day.

So, just have patience. Add a few people you know. Listen to them for a few days. And you'll "get" Twitter soon enough.