If you haven't tried Twitter you really should - if you need an excuse, here's your chance

Update: Rohit Barghava has a nice blog post on using Twitter for Marketing, here

Twitter is an absolutely amazing tool for micro-communicating with people in your network. I use it both for streaming stuff that I am doing, as I do it (well, mostly stuff such as what I am researching, reading, blogging watching, liking, working on etc - not details about which coffee I drink ;), as well as for sharing some quick yet powerful realizations with my 'followers'

My regular twitter account is here, and below are my current stats

My so-called Daily Wisdoms tweets are here (this is where I share the nuggets-of-the-web ... nope, not just my own), and below are the latest stats

You can get all tweets and all on my new life-stream page, too (I know... it sounds kind of mad but it's easy to do so I figured I should try it).

Now, here is the key question: why should you try Twitter? What's the big deal?  Here are some reasons:

1. It forces you to be succinct and get to the point quickly -  this is indeed a very good exercise, imho.
2. It allows you to get into conversations with some very interesting people that you may have never met, otherwise - I have met some great people via Twitter, and Facebook and Friendfeed, and my network has mushroomed as a consequence (and yes, that does convert to 'business' eventually, as well - all good networks do!)
3. It allows you to broadcast yourself and 'your brand' to people, but it does not interrupt them or forces them to listen, unlike, email (which is why I, personally, discontinued my email newsletters)
4. As Steve Rubel says, the new web is not about sites - it's about services (and Twitter fits that category very well;)
5. 100s of brands and companies are starting to use Twitter to send quick updates to people who 'like' them - seems like a great way to add value to a relationship that's based on merit and trust
6. So...kill the press releases and the email blasts - switch to Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Seesmic, Kyte - and start blogging if you want to talk to bloggers.

Enough reasons?

And if you think I am getting carried away with wasting my time on this... ouch - check out these Twitterholics!