I would never stream my Twitterings on any normal website, but I thought you might appreciate a small selection of them here:

Why does Twitter ask, “What are you doing?” above the write box? Why not “What are you thinking?” Better still, “Why are you doing that?”

Blackberry 9000 on horizon. Just ordered Curve. Should I cancel and wait?

UK Gov on 23pc in new poll. Conservatives on 49pc. The next election is all over.

Moneyizor. The failing eurozone: http://www.moneyizor.com/2008/05/09/the-failing-eurozone/

I was disappointed with Yanik Silver’s book “Moonlighting on the Internet”. Sooo Web 1.0 Minus. Old hat Plus.

Considering buying “Problogger The Book”, but have I read it all on the site? Can anyone convince me it’s a good investment?

Twittergram sounds like a good service in embryo. See Dave Winer. Let’s hope it surfaces soon.

It’s nearly 1pm and I haven’t started my 3-hour working day. Wandering around book shops and buying an Aussie hat absorbed my morning.

Just bought Herman Hesse’s “Narcissus and Goldmund”. It’s the only one I haven’t read. Also John Buchan’s “Sick Heart River”.

Switched Syntagma to full feed. Resisted long and hard but the tide is irresistible.

Steve Rubel thinks that Renaissance Man is doomed because of the internet. The thing is, RM only uses the i/n sparingly. He reads many books.

New Mayor of London has appointed Bill Bratton to clean up London as he did NYC under Giuliani. Great Move. Congrats Boris.

My problem is I find it hard to work when the sun is shining. This is why I never moved to California.

And lots more, folks. Roll up at http://twitter.com/Syntagma. 140 characters of …

Please finish the sentence yourself.

I’ve been on Twitter for a few weeks now, so I should give some sort of account of it, especially as I said I would.

I have remained very wary about “following” too many people — with good cause. So far I’ve only added 24, but already when I logon in the morning there are pages and pages of back messages, mainly by a handful of scribes who tell me what they had for breakfast, how many cups of coffee they imbibed yesterday, and then list all the meetings they’ve got throughout the day, before embarking on a marathon to ‘n’ fro with obscure individuals with names like Plodoff, CrankyAss and LowFalutin’ (I made those up to avoid embarrassing real people).

I’ve taken to skimming deftly through those Tweetaramas now, allowing around 5 seconds per page.

The most valuable facility is the “Replies” folder which holds all messages aimed directly at you (@Syntagma) which are very much fewer than the general river of Tweets. I could easily get by with a few Tweets a day, plus references to the Replies cache.

However, I’ve also enabled my cellphone/mobile to receive mobile Tweets. I’ve no idea what they are, but suspect they are “direct messages” which are sent as texts. I seem to have a limit of 250. Maybe after that they will charge my account. Who knows? I’ll be sure to turn it off when they do.

I do have some rather prestigious “Web 2.0″ people following me. Check the list. Some of them are quite interesting in a Web 2.0 sort of way. So far no Web 3.0 followers — maybe they’re too busy semanticizing about the future.

The real problem with Twitter, as with all social networks, is its addictive qualities. It’s so easy to drown in the stuff. If you work for a living online, as I do, it’s vital to rein in your expressive tendencies. Tweets pay no bills (pun not intended).

Indeed, Tweeting will undermine your ability to post content on your sites as it can drain away your creative juices before you’ve even begun the day’s work. Faced with a long, detailed piece to write, the ease of a <140 character post spoils you for the harder task. Better to Twitter in 5-minute spurts two or three times a day.

If, as many do, you attempt to document your entire day as it passes, you are a gonna. As in "gone with the birds" -- no pun intended.

I'll stick with it for now, highlighting the occasional post, like this one -- using tinyurl.com to reduce the character count of the link -- and see where it takes me. As the numbers of my followers mount, I see dimly the name of Alfred Hitchcock materializing in my mind's eye.

I’ve just joined Twitter — for technical reasons, I hasten to add.

A pair of lovebirds twittering

The technical reason is that I discovered that the username “Syntagma” had not been taken, so I secured it in perpetuity — or as long as any social network lasts, whichever is the shorter.

I’ve sprayed my entire Gmail address book with invites, so you may get one. Since it’s still over 300 addresses long, even after drastic pruning, I’m awaiting the results with some trepidation.

So far, I have one tweet on my sheet, a brilliant piece of literature about what I’ve been doing today. Please don’t all rush at once to view it or you may bring the server down.

If anyone wants to follow or be followed, just send a tweet to Syntagma. I’m sure the system will handle all the techie stuff. I still haven’t found my way around it all yet.

I will, naturally, produce a comprehensive analysis of the service soon. In under 140 characters, of course.

You know, maybe that’s where they’re going wrong.

There’s quite a bit of chatter around about comments being separated from blog posts by various network services. Somehow this is said to diminish blogs as a folkish artform. Does that matter?

The 21st-century internet is the stuff of Quantum Mechanics. Everything is possible without limit, whatever we may think about the outcome. The Web is a vast array of small atoms, not large planets. Its laws are closer to magic than physics and can be said to exist only within the context of human thought.

Leaving that inevitability aside because we can’t influence it, I believe we should be more worried about small concerns in small cases.

A couple of months ago there was an explosion of comments on Twitter about the way an interview was conducted with a founder of Facebook by a hapless BusinessWeek reporter, who was deemed not to have done a great job. To read some A-list bloggers, you’d think Jesus had been crucified all over again.

The poor woman concerned must have felt the stigmata piercing her extremities.

As I commented on one blog, “If this is what passes for REALLY BIG NEWS on Twitter, God help us all.”

It’s the old, old story of mass hysteria breaking out on what seems to be the big question of the moment. If you don’t get involved, you’re somehow not quite alive. Even people not in the interview audience were screaming blue murder — apparently.

Now, I’m not going to have another go at Twitter. I actually admire Evan Williams and his business ethos. He deserves to succeed and he has many supporters.

I just wish the “wisdom of the crowd” was not being compressed into a few self-appointed Black Holes around various insignificant 1960s-style “happenings”.

We need the crowd to defeat tyrants, not to tyrannize ordinary folk just doing their jobs, no matter how awkwardly.

Here ends the sermon on no particular mount.