If you dig into expert commentary on the subject, there's this strange dynamic around the Twitter party. It seems like critics want to love, hate or at least appear indifferent to Twitter, perhaps to mask the obvious question: "How can you change the world in 140 characters or less?" Most blogs about Twitter will have a form of apology or disclaimer. For example the 901am blog by Sharon Sarmiento captures the sentiment: "To be honest, my first impression of Twitter was that it was for folks who had way too much time on their hands who narcissistically wanted to broadcast every random thought that crossed their brains."

It's true, a service answering one simple question, "What are you doing?" sounds so-Generation Y (See chart.), with a first-person world view and graphophilic-enabled drive to be somebody. Scroll through a page or two of short messages on the Public Timeline (one of the default views on Twitter) and the majority seem like navel-watching.

The first post by someone answering the essential Twitter question, "What are you doing?" is likely to be "trying to figure this thing out." Within a day or two of working on that question, the quality of posts may evolve. Just like the question "Who are you?" can become a life's work when practiced long enough, "What are you doing?" moves from temporal descriptions of the mundane to more emotional, humorous and intellectual musings.

The magic comes from the one or two posts every 10 seconds that present universal truths, and that makes the Twitter experience like watching a human lavalamp. Every five seconds or so (today) someone around the world is putting something you should read out there. The point of this social criticism is that Twitter taps into something deeper than the moment, than Gen-Y, than the ADD-attention span, and it's more than social networks that meet all your devices.

The big idea is that it's small and immediate. There's little room for fluff or editorial. It's a distilled meme or it's an update on something relevant to you. Whether it's the lives of loved ones, the status of a project, the fortunes of your team or fantasy player or even the weather, it is highly relevant should you choose to lock in your attention. Pick the right "friends" and the posts become personally, socially and professionally rewarding.

Given that Twitter is finding traction/velocity, the question every smart marketer seems to be asking is, "Is there a 'there' there?" Briefly, "yes," and in the next section I'll offer concrete applications for marketers and publishers to exploit this platform right away.