“How was your trip to New Orleans?” a good friend asked me over the phone after we hadn't talked for a while, “You had enthusiastic tweets.” He says this, of course, because I find myself tethered (for better or worse) to Biz Stone's micro-blogging platform, the politician-celebrity-nobody connecting social experiment known as twitter. In fact, I just command+tabbed over to tell him what I thought of West Wing, a life-enriching show I started on his recommendation. But beyond television recommendations and trip reports, twitter allows you to get a sense of migration patterns of those you admire.

Cut back to March, when the annual South by Southwest Festival took over the entertainment world and Austin, Tex. I wasn't there, thanks to the rigors of my Fine University Education, but I was there in spirit, following the festive ephemera from PR folks from Chicago that I worked with over the summer, the guys from All Songs Considered, and one of the best duos in the hip hop game, the Blue Scholars Geologic and Sabzi. In my stead, they tweeted. And I was enlightened — or at least distracted from philosophy class.

If you're not in the twittersphere, which I recommend you to be, you may still be holding to the tired idea that tweeting distilled the worst, most disgusted aspect of Facebook — the endless, pitiless, pitiful status update. But that's a misappropriation of endless cries for validation. Due to twitters' simplicity, a cap of 140 characters, use of only text aside from Twitpic and condensed hyperlinks, one is forced into concision, and it becomes immediately apparent who is worth following and who is not. If you're not a good tweeter (nee writer), then I'm not going to follow you. Unless you're awesome.

And the best part? Tweeting is short.