Do you use Twitter? Twitter is a free website that allows you to post short messages -- no more than 140 characters. Other people can follow what you post on Twitter, and you can select a group of people that you want to follow. If this is all new to you, David Pogue of the New York Times recently explained it in this article.
A lot of lawyers use Twitter. Here is a very incomplete list of hundreds of them. And it seems that every day I am seeing yet another site talking about lawyers using Twitter.
Notwithstanding the buzz on Twitter being the hot tool for attorneys, I don't consider it all that relevant to my practice. On the other hand, it can be something to break up the monotony of a day -- the digital equivalent of someone poking their head in my office to share a thought, tell a quick story, ask a question, say something silly or pass along breaking gossip or news. I follow a small group of people on Twitter -- a few lawyers, but mostly just people who often post interesting technology-related thoughts. If I find that I have a minute or so of down time, I will sometimes take a quick look at recent Twitter posts. I don't post to my own Twitter account very often, but sometimes I will announce when I add a substantial post on this site.
You can access the Twitter website on your iPhone using Safari (and the site will give you a specially-formatted page for the iPhone screen) but Twitter works much better if you use one of the many dedicated Twitter apps. And that is the primary reason for my post today: iLounge recently reviewed all 23 of the iPhone Twitter clients, and they found both gems and stinkers. I myself use TwitterFon -- it works great, and it is free -- but check out the iLounge article if you want to learn more about what is out there.
Is Twitter the next big thing for lawyers? Probably not, but it is fun, and I love that it is so easy to use on the iPhone.
