Forty five minutes ago on Twitter, a pop superstar just told her fans, in text language (since there is a 140 character limit); she was getting her nails done for her concert tomorrow. Three minutes ago, the same superstar posted another tweet saying her nails look “friggin’ awesome” and posted a link that showed a picture of her newly done nails. Welcome to the world of Social Networking site, Twitter, the micro-blogging sensation that has gotten the whole world smitten and in love with the new social networking phenomenon. Twitter's spread has been faster than that of the Swine Flu virus!

The idea of Twitter, is like sending a Short Messaging Service (SMS) or a text message, only instead of sending it to one, or several friends through a mobile phone, it is broadcast throughout the internet for anyone and everyone who is interested to see. Created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has become almost an overnight sensation, rated the fastest growing site by researchers, the Nielsen Group and in March 2009, had a monthly growth exponential of over 1300%. The Internet world and community had been thrown a curveball; conventional blog sites like BlogSpot and Wordpress was sidelined. Micro-blogging is now the sensation. As the attention span for human beings get shorter every day, lengthy blogs regarding daily activities seemed too much to read. The blogging world that was dear to the hearts and minds of the internet community was cruelly dealt a blow when blog updates started getting infrequent in favor of the easy-to-update and track Twitter.

Even celebrities, politicians and billionaire businessmen update their Twitter page, some simply because it seems fun, others to garner and gain even more popularity than before. For celebrities, the number of followers they have on Twitter has become some sort of a competition. Unlike conventional blogging, Twitter has given the average man and woman a small window to see what life is like for the television or movie superstar since updates are done in real time and followers know exactly what celebrities are doing at exactly what time. Even gossip magazines have jumped on the Twitter wagon, updating readers on saucy tweets celebrities make.

Twitter has become such a phenomenon, on 12th June 2009, a “Twitpocalypse” occurred, when the unique identifier that comes with each tweet exceeded the limit for 32-bit signed integers. This shows that people are literally on Twitter and tweeting everywhere they go; on the bus, in the car, at someone’s house and even doing business in the restroom.

While tweets are mostly of made up of updates that are not serious in nature, Twitter have also been used in emergencies. In October 2007, during the forest fires of California, Twitter was used by friends and families to keep each other informed of their location and of the location of the fires. The American Red Cross uses Twitter to inform and update locals of disasters with emergency numbers and available statistics. The Mumbai attacks in 2008 was hailed by CNN as the day the social media came of age as eyewitnesses updated happenings with about 80 tweets every five seconds and tweets from victims and people on the ground helped compile a list of the injured and dead in the vicinity.

I first started a Twitter account when I started participating in the HubChallenge. My username is Rhinest, just in case anyone wants to know. These days I am getting a strong feeling that this Christmas, a lot of people will be celebrating the occasion on Twitter, and Twitter alone!

While Disney star Miley Cyrus maintains her single status on Twitter and Klkclk69, the alien character from the movie District 9, tweets what seems to be a load of unreadable alien language, an army of other less conspicuous people are tweeting at the same time as them, their updates being read by millions around the world. Think what you wish but Twitter looks set to be the micro-blogging sensation of the future. So, if you are reading this and you do not own a Twitter account, what are you waiting for?