@alex: think of it is a very public instant messaging application. A place to capture the things you think about that arent worthy of their own blog post. You only have 140 characters, so it must be pithy.

bits. bits and pieces. not pits.

It’s been very interesting for me to observe how different people use Twitter and what they expect from it.

Scobleizer definitely seems to use it as a fire hose. Following thousands of people, it seems impossible for it to be anything but. I eventually unfollowed him because of the massive amount of conversations he has that I have no interest in.

I prefer following close friends, coworkers, and various people who run in various circles, such as the agile sphere. Agilists frequently express viewpoints and carry out interesting debate that I find incredibly valuable. Because I am interested in specific parties, I tend to want to read every single tweet.

Then there are people who expect following others in Twitter to be more like subscribing to a blog. They follow very few people and I expect they want a low frequency of tweets to review, and they expect them to be interesting. A fellow coworker unfollowed me recently, for example, because I simply tweet too much for his liking. I thought Scobleizer was over the edge, but for some people, even I am over the edge.

It’s important to note that I would still be following people like Scobleizer if I could more finely tune my notification settings. I prefer to “show all @ replies”, which means I see absolutely everything the people I follow tweet– even bits of conversation with others. And that’s what I want– it allows me to discover other interesting people.

As soon as a Twitter client comes along that allows me to split the people I’m following into different groups and review those “tweetstreams” independently, I’ll be head-over heels in love with Twitter.