I admit it, I’ve caught the Twitter bug. I know, I know. It looks ridiculous on first glance. I didn’t get it at first, either. I signed up at Anne’s urging, and I still didn’t quite get it. But then I started to post to it more, and I added some friends (a few who also follow) and it’s kind of weird how that Twitterific window on the side of my monitor doesn’t make me feel so alone while I’m working.

Most of the WWD writing staff Twitters now. In a traditional working environment, you have a sense of how your co-workers spend their day. What they did last night. What their plans for the weekend are. Twitter gives us remote web workers a bit of that. With only 140 characters to play with, it’s not as distracting as it looks.

Is it a fad? Sure. But so what? If it disappeared tomorrow, I have no real investment in it to lose. But I’d miss it. When I blog, I have to think about a beginning, middle and end (or I try to). When I IM with someone, I feel an obligation to keep the conversation going. With Twitter, there’s no such obligation. It’s interesting how liberating it is to just speak your mind in 140 characters about whatever is going through your head or going on at that moment and not worry about it. And it’s interesting just how entertaining it is to read those brain-bursts coming from other people.

Now mind you, I don’t have my “tweets” available on the public timeline and I’m not interested in reading stuff from people I don’t “know.” I’m not looking to meet new people…just to feel a bit more connected to people I already know, even if they don’t know me…like tech-famous guys Steve Rubel or Leo Laporte, both huge Twitter fans. If you Twitter, and I’d recognize your name, and you’d like to be my friend (oh how lame does that sound?) then you can find me here.