twitter: the public chat 
I have been following a few friends
twitter messages via
Google Reader and I get the impression that it works much like a group chat system. The conversations are similar to cross-linked comments in weblogs and have a similar publicity.
Unlike these friends I never really started to use twitter and even deleted my account there, as well as in a few other social networking systems. I give away so much already so I don't want to make the harvesting too easy. What strikes me though is, why a service like twitter has taken away the public chat room from classic instant messaging systems. It works much like
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where you can just join into an open chat. However, it looks crude that you have to read the others chat to actually communicate.
I guess the real advantage of twitter is the simple user interfaces on loads of different systems that heavy weight instant messaging systems failed to provide until now.
