'Twitter' - the magic word that kept popping up here and there around the Internet and other unexpected places until it finally got me. If you've heard about it, or, indeed, have been using it for some time, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. If you haven't, I'm hoping this little entry will give you a reason to try it out.

In a nutshell, Twitter is a "microblog" site based on the exchange of short messages, or "Tweets," as they are called, exactly 140 characters long (to compare, an sms has 160), answering a very simple question: "What are you doing?"

Imagine birds in spring, tweeting away here and there, one tweets, another one answers (or not), and this creates a charming melange of sounds and a wonderful sense of activity.

Birds of a feather flock together, as they say, and now, thanks to Twitter, people of different feather do too. Exchanging short messages about this and that, replying to the "tweets" of someone else, or just tweeting away happily on their own about what they're having for breakfast, and so on. It's all very sweet, very social and, above all, short.

This brevity and simplicity is, in fact, exactly what makes Twitter so charming for teachers of English. Imagine setting up your own account, telling your students to do the same and to "Follow" you (as it is called on Twitter), then you "follow" them back and thus you will have created a chance to exchange your little "tweets" together, a wonderfully effective and lively little "tweeting" forum for exchanging short messages. 

Here, I think, we come to the true genius of Twitter. It wasn't until I tried it myself that I realised how important it is to actually have something to say and then manage to express it effectively in up to 140 characters. With this limitation in mind, people are forced to learn to be miraculously effective (or not) even if English is their native language. Now imagine what wonderful stimulating element that brings to a class of keen EFL learners and social networking enthusiasts.

Of course, this is just one of the possible benefits for English students and teachers. There's much more. Accounts focusing on learning English have already been created, the BBC has its own number of Twitter accounts, and so have many other individuals and institutions world wide. Would you, perhaps, like to follow direct messages from Monty Python's legendary John Cleese, the ingenious stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard, or, if you wish, Britney Spears? Well, you can with Twitter, but beware of impostors, who are in most cases charmingly "inconspicuous."

As I already stated, I'd love to hear from you on your thoughts on Twitter. Do you think it's banal, not worthy of all the attention it gets? Could it have a negative effect on students' awareness of spelling, grammar & syntax? Or are you a keen Twitter user yourself?

In all cases, please, do write a comment, or, in case you'd like to give it a shot, set up your own Twitter account and we can tweet about it.

See you, or "tweet" you, there!

Sn

a BBC news item on one Twitter user and a photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7834755.stm

a 'not so positive' view on Twitter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/22/wikipedia-internet

& my Twitter account (with a selection of accounts in English I follow): http://twitter.com/mariansteiner