#metatwitter

Twitter is the internet's gift to lazy journalists.

Witness this story. Almost entirely constructed from a few simple mouse-clicks. The story itself is devoid of any genuine controversy or intrigue, and is only of interest if you care what Sarah Brown thinks about things - in which case you're probably one of her >774,000 followers already. And 'tweets' occupy an odd middle ground: they're not candid private remark, and they're not press releases. So they're neither substantial (at 140 characters, how could they be?) nor exclusive (however much hacks try to present them that way).

Twitter, to use its own strange parlance, has been a Trending Topic (#twitter, if you will) for a while now, nestling alongside The Wire in the bargain bin of zeitgeisty dinner-party subjects. (And here I am, talking about people talking about it! I'm in a hall of meta mirrors!) Received wisdom divides into two camps. On the one hand, there are those who say it heralds a new dawn for social networking, or the internet, or humanity in general. On the other, there are those (including, notoriously, David Cameron) who'll wheel out some version of the following: "What's the point of twitter? I mean WHAT is the point? I don't care if you're having a cup of tea! Shut up already!"

Both are wrong.

Twitter is almost certainly not the future. Even with all the hype it's been getting in the media, it hasn't caught on in the way facebook did - and without a certain tipping point of users, it doesn't quite work. In certain communities where everyone uses it (say, journalism or stand-up comedy) it can be a vibrant and entertaining means of communicating and exchanging ideas. But essentially, if your mates aren't on it, there's not much point. My own twitter page is a rather forlorn thing: my tweets tend to go unheeded, and should I fire off a message in the direction of one of the journos or celebs I "follow", I feel like a kid rather desperately trying to join in with a playground kickabout.

BUT it can work brilliantly. This is largely due to the simplicity of the format, which leaves users in control of how they want to use their 140 characters - unlike facebook, whose cumbersome and irritating applications (game of zombies, anyone?) have pulled it in too many directions. So, in among all the people tweeting about their cups of tea there are a few gems. Like an ongoing fantasy soap opera of Nick Griffin's life (@realnickgriffin), or an 18th-century commentary on current affairs (@DrSamuelJohnson). Within moments of Michael Jackson's death @jeremylimb was musing: "Has anyone told Paul McCartney the girl is his?"

Meanwhile, the papers (with only a few hours to fill pages and pages of their Michael Jackson Death Special Editions) were dedicating substantial column inches to the reaction on Twitter: instant and copyright-free comment, without having to pick up a phone. So, a site which is uniquely positioned to aggregate responses to the news becomes the news... and we're back in the hall of mirrors.

Now, I'm off to watch The Wire.