Here’s a little Twitter Haiku for you:

Twitter tweets are neat
Say it fast – 140 max!
Be helpful and fun

It seems that everyone in my IM circle is on Twitter these days. And I keep hearing about it everywhere I turn. In fact, the Feb. 9 issue of BtoB magazine had several stories about it or that mentioned it.

“Twitter is so simple that it can be used on a cellphone or BlackBerry. It takes minutes to set up, requires no local software and makes users instantly productive,” wrote Paul Gillin in his “New Channels” column. “It is rapidly emerging as the most important new social media platform of the last two years.”

I remember when I first heard about it. My husband listens to the TWIT podcast and the host was ga ga over it. I just didn’t get it. Didn’t he have a life he needed (wanted?) to live? Fast forward a couple of years, and I’m hooked. It is cathartic and I make connections with people I wouldn’t otherwise. It has even had a positive impact on my business.

According to Gillin, “More than 50 CEOs have Twitter accounts, and the number of celebrities, politicians and business thought leaders who tweet their thoughts and observations is growing by leaps and bounds.” I think this is one of the nice things about Twitter. When I worked in the corporate world and had a random thought … as I often do … I would just get up, go over to my friend in the next cubie and spit it out. (I’ve been fortunate to have very patient and tolerant co-workers.) But now that I’m working out of my home, I can’t really do that. Twitter has been an awesome outlet of all these random thoughts.

I don’t claim to know how to monetize Twitter … there are experts for that … but I do know that it has proved to be a valuable tool for keeping in touch with the pulse of business, friends and the occasional interesting stranger.