So Are Its Aficionados Called Twits?

It's the next big thing from the dot-com realm -- blogging via mobile phone, brought to you by a company called Twitter:

Silicon Valley is abuzz over a new mini-blogging service for mobile phones that some predict will be a mass-market hit with the reach of a YouTube or MySpace.

Over the past two weeks, Twitter has attracted the sort of hyperbole the Valley reserves for its next internet darling – though such self-reinforcing adulationalso led to dotcom mania. ...

"This is the first application that people have got excited about since Flickr came out," said Ross Mayfield, a Valley entrepreneur, comparing it to a popular photo-sharing site bought by Yahoo in 2005. "I don't think it will be the next YouTube – but I do think it will gain wide adoption," he said.

Users of Twitter post short messages – up to 140 characters – that can be viewed either on a website or on mobile phones. "Twitter probably wouldn't have existed before blogging, when people learned to be more transparent," Mr Mayfield added.

Though launched publicly last summer, use of Twitter started to take off in the middle of March after it was adopted by tech­nology bloggers attending the South by Southwest conference in Texas. (MSNBC)

Twitter's a great name for the product, despite the risky nickname alluded to in my headline. The 140-word limit would be a challenge even for short attention span posters like me -- but in this new "share all" world we live in, teenage twits may be Twittering about their lives even more than they are today with MySpace and YouTube.

I'm not sure that means civilization and humankind will advance.