This article by Shannon Clark is insightful.
I'm not sure I get Twitter yet. I'm not even sure I get Facebook yet other than it's qualities as a closed email system that I've talked about before.
The array of communication options is dizzying and I'm having trouble finding a comfortable place to stand. I clearly understand it's not a place to set up shop, put down roots, or find a solid foundation to stand on. The information world, web world, etc., evolves much too rapidly for that to be an issue. It's a matter of finding the best place to stand at the moment.
Right now blogging works for me, and unfortunately email. It's unfortunate because I think email's architecture is the most inefficient and troubled in spite of being the most widely adopted. Now pretty much everyone has email. Everyone. And Gmail is beautiful and a joy to use, nonetheless.
But, then, maybe email doesn't work for me. Lately it's been seeming more and more like an empty room. I get very little email other than from spammers that I've asked to receive it from. Sending email feels more and more like speaking into an empty room. Hm.
Back at Emory, I held the position from the time of LiveJournal and MySpace that the students had already found effective and useable solutions to their communication problems while we struggled to provide a barely successful (at best) email solution. What we really should have done was provide a way for them to all connect together, and make sure we knew how to reach them officially, then let them carry on.
Maybe the rest of the world is catching on to these post-email solutions.