15 hottest products of 2008: Twitter

At first, I didn't get Twitter. The internet service allows users to write and send, via SMS or online, short (140 characters max) messages to a network of fellow Twitters, usually off-the-cuff updates describing what they are doing at the moment. I couldn't see why anyone would want to have such insights into my life. However, slowly and surely, after getting enough emails from people who said they were following me on Twitter, I started using it again and soon after, wrote a post for WalletPop called "The Secrets of Mixing Business with Twitter."

Safe to say that probably most of the country's 301 million residents still don't get Twitter, but 6 million do. That is, six million have signed up, according to The New York Times, but concludes that "the number who use it regularly is much smaller." Still, that's not bad, considering it was launched in 2006, although as the Times says, it didn't really begin to take off until around March of 2007.

Twitter continues to amaze, astound, or underwhelm and baffle, depending on your point of view. For instance, a couple weeks ago in The Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Turner writes about recently joining Twitter and seemed a little unsure but open about its possibilities.

"Nary a tweet have I posted thus far, yet already I have a dozen subscribers. Who are they? How long will they wait? Why do they wait? Will they spurn me if I fail to twitter? Would a banter suffice?"