Have you checked out twitter? I’ve been seeing it mentioned on the Web a lot lately, and read about it in places like Time. It’s an application you can access from web, SMS, etc., that lets you post a little message – up to 140 characters like a text message.

You can make it visible to the world or not, but it gets distributed to anybody who’s signed up to follow what you’re doing. And that’s what you do: you type in what you’re doing. If you’re late for a meeting, or eating a fried tofurkey sandwich – whatever you want your friends to know you’re up to.

I guess it’s sort of like the next generation IM, except that it’s not really a conversation. You don’t sit there waiting for the other person to type, which was what killed Instant Messaging for me. You can reply if you want, but it’s not expected as far as I can tell.

You just answer the question “What are you doing?” and move on, and update it next time you feel like it. (Actually, many people just type whatever they feel moved to. Just a bit of blather, or a celebrity sighting.)

In a sense, it’s like a mini blog, in which the blogger — tweeter, twitterer? — just briefly posts what’s up. Others can subscribe to the feed, like we do with blogs, via computer, cell phone, etc. And if it’s not marked private, the feed becomes part of the global expression of being late and eating tofurkey.

It’s pretty cool. I want to play with it but I need friends to do it too. So if you and I are acquainted, I think you should go and sign up. Then e-mail me your user name, and I’ll send you mine.