I'm playing around with Twitter these days to see what's what -- but most of all, because I don't spend enough time online. :^)

My Tweets appear at right. Here's my Twitter page.

If you're on Twitter (apparently there's only about 3,300 TOians) or have otherwise checked it out yourself, let me know.

The Sunday Star had a big Twitter piece. Some excerpts:

Until very recently, Twitter could have been regarded as little more than that: an always-on inanity machine, indulging spontaneous tedium. In the past two months, though, those narrow parameters have broadened considerably.

In April, an American student in Egypt used Twitter to send a warning and a plea – "tweeting," as it's known – through his cellphone: "Arrested." The journalism grad, James Karl Buck, had been rounded up by police during an anti-government protest; his live Twitter feed rallied the forces necessary – friends, family, and eventually, the U.S. government – to get him out.

Then, last month, Twitter's coming-out party: the magnitude-7.9 earthquake in Chengdu that buried thousands. Twitter users offered the first on-scene accounts. "Slight ly dizzy after being shaken around by the Chengdu earthquake for several hours now," tweeted one user, Casperodj.

Suddenly, Twitter's triviality was no longer its most notable feature. "I saw three people in Chengdou giving reports on the ground long before traditional media could even get close," said Fons Tuinstra, a media consultant in Shanghai and a fellow at the U.S. media nonprofit organization the Poynter Institute. "On that first day, it was a very important tool – a great example of how it could work."

A little over a year into its life, Twitter appears to be reaching its tipping point – the threshold where mindless pastime ends and social relevance begins.

"A year ago, it was a weird little toy," says Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief of Technology Review, a publication owned by M.I.T. "Now, its potential seems significantly greater than that."

Twitter is not a mature or stable platform. I've been unable to post by IM for at least a week. I've seen pluses and minuses so far. Here's what one visionary sees:

IT WORKS LIKE THIS: Sign up for Twitter. Flounder in the din of constant random "tweets." Right yourself. Find other Twitterers to "follow." Get ready for every mini-update – Twitter limits posts to 140 characters; the accepted term is "micro-blogging" – to land instantly in your personal Twitterfeed so that you, too, can share in the epiphanies of such users as femmedelacreme.

The enforced brevity seemed also to enforce triviality.

"The great thing about Twitter is that you can only do one thing with it," says Fuinstra. "That's also the disadvantage." But recent events seem to suggest otherwise – a notion that Amber MacArthur shares.

A Toronto-based Web strategist and tech journalist, she is one of Twitter's most-followed members, with 11,608 followers – almost triple the number she had in March. (Robert Scoble, a U.S.-based tech blogger, is said to be the biggest with more than 25,000.)

"I think it's a new kind of social networking based on conversations vs. connections," says MacArthur, via an online chat. "It's just the beginning of powerful new social networks that will change the way we communicate."

Update

Mungo, a bit of an outdoors buff, really liked this use of Twitter.