The magnificent Beth Kanter told me (well, she told a room full of us at one of her presentations) that it takes 21 days to create a habit (you know, outside of the wrong kinds of habits). Since my New Year's Resolution in 2007 was to be less snarky, I've embarked upon a grand experiment: I'm going to try all those crazy Web 2.0 tools I currently mock. I'll use each for 21 (work) days and see if I learn anything useful. Along the way, I'll document anything cool, useful, or fun that happens.

I'm starting with Twitter. Twitter is the lazy man's blog. It's an application that lets you quickly and easily publish what you're up to -- the blog you're reading, the report you're writing, the cat you're feeding. You invite your friends to "follow" your actions, and you can choose to follow theirs. The result? A constantly updated stream of what everyone in your network is up to. And folks, that's a lot of chatter.

I created an account back around the NTC, since we used it for the conference. Today, I started by updating my profile. Then I decided it was time to start Tweeting (as Twitter posts are called). You can do this in several ways: via IM, text message, or the web interface. None of those were particularly appealing to me, but Twitter has an open API, so there are lots of cool little apps out there that let you interact with it.

I found a little tool for my Mac called Twitteriffic. It's a nice little widget that sits on my desktop, always open, on top of all my apps. It stays open all day and routinely checks for updates from my network. It's small, tiny even, and pretty unobtrusive. (It helps that I have the 17" display.)

Then I started watching. I got a few traffic reports. (Who can text while they drive? Isn't that dangerous?) I got mundane task list updates.

What should I post? Would anybody really care that I'm drafting webinar descriptions? But, what if I... ask a question? I asked how people find other folks to follow on Twitter. Behold: answers! Lesson 1: You can use Twitter to learn more about Twitter.

New knowledge in hand, I found a bunch of people to follow, including presidential candidate John Edwards. According to his Twitter profile, he's sort of active. Interesting. But here's the weird part. Three minutes after I started following John Edwards, he -- you know, his intern -- started following me. Does John Edwards care when I leave the office to find a new charger for my cell phone? And how does he keep track of me when he follows 3500 other people. Hm.

I watched Twitter all day. I basically took the time I would normally waste reading celebrity gossip to read about the weather in Minneapolis. Is it terrible that I find La Lohan's latest arrest more interesting? The one gem I got was when Beth Kanter linked to a new report she helped author. There it is! Lesson 2: You can use Twitter for self promotion/resource sharing.

And that's it for today. I think tomorrow I'll see if there are any celebrities on Twitter that I can follow. Now THAT's useful.

In summary:

Lesson 1: You can use Twitter to learn more about Twitter!

Lesson 2: You can use Twitter for self promotion/resource sharing.