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by Teresa Martin

Here's a secret - writers know that the column they write when they are feeling blocked and can't write on deadline is called "I was just thinking..." Or something along those lines. It's an idea that's been around for a very long time. Probably since there have been writers and deadlines and the inevitable sense of desperation that occurs within that intersection.

In the hands of good writer, these columns/essays/articles become good reads. The seemingly random somehow knit together, the phases are a delight to read, the words invoke vivid imagery. It's a sort of prose poem.

Former Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle made this genre of column a regular feature of his and he actually did call it "I Was Just Thinking." Sometimes it was good. Sometimes it was inane. In the end it got him fired when it turned out he wrote one of these columns while channeling comedian George Carlin a little too closely. Seemed a big chunk was almost verbatim from Carlin's book, Brain Droppings. Whose Short Takes are, by the way, of this same genre as well.

Which leads me to Twitter.

When I look at the lines of seemingly disconnected moments in life generated by Twitter postings, I can't help but think of this column format. Some of the Twitter strands are entertaining, visual, poetic, amusing, and enlightening. Most of them are, well, more like eavesdropped moments.

If you, like me, remember Mike Barnicle when he was a Globe columnist then you may well be outside the world of Twitter. Twitter, which was launched in March 2006, is a new way of thinking about connecting with your social circles. You sign up to send and receive personal newsflashes about yourself and your network via cell phone or message device or web.

Here's how the company explains it:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? ... With Twitter, you can stay hyper-connected to your friends and always know what they're doing...

It's a micro-blog - posts are limited to 140 characters. It's a user network - somewhere between 300,000 and 700,000 people and counting. It's an application platform - content, like quizzes and polls, and things not yet defined, can be written atop Twitter. It's a communication tool - for example, the Los Angeles Fire Department is using Twitter as an update tool (http://twitter.com/LAFD).

My problem, of course, is that there isn't anyone I want to stay hyper-connected to. I like floating along in my own way, on my own time and not broadcasting the micro-moments of my life. Which aren't that exciting anyway. If I were Twittering, here's what I've have reported today...

8am. Need to write. Going to go write.
9:15 am. Better make breakfast for child. Good moms make pancakes and bacon on weekends for their child. Am going to be good mom.
9:21 am. Pancake mix out of date. Bacon with frozen bagels?
11:45 am. Spotted large pile of yard debris. It hasn't cleaned up itself, darn. Better go take care of it ...
1 pm. Need to write. Going to go write.
1:03pm. Maybe I should visit that yard sale first.
1:35: At yard sale. Cool boing-boing retro metal chair.
3:15 pm. Floor needs cleaning. Better do that Right Now.
4:00 pm. Leftover Mac & Cheese calling my name.
5:24 pm. Just surfed for vendors of iris bulbs.
5:27 pm. Bearded iris are classified into six groups by height. Who knew?
8:08 pm. Need to write. Going to go write.

Now see, didn't that make your life fuller?

Maybe it is generational. Some six or eight years ago I knew a mom who was ready to pull her hair out over her ninth grade son's need to leave chat windows perpetually open on the family computer and to share updates with all his friends about the minutiae of his life. "Why do his friends need to know that he's using the bathroom or eating dinner!" she'd say with frustration oozing out her pores.

I think that what we are seeing is new formats for the core set of social interactions that build our interpersonal bonds. These interactions are especially critical during transitional times - like ninth grade! - and they've always happened. Only now they happen with our medium of choice, the digital dataflow. Twitter - and similar options on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace - reflect this.

Relationships are made up a million little interactions. One detail is insignificant but those millions of insignificant details weave together to define a life. We build connections by having or sharing little details over and over again. Maybe you don't know me, but you've probably gone to cook something and discovered a key ingredient is out of date or missing. See, we just bonded!

We don't necessarily see our social circles every day. We might not live in the same place or even on the same time zone. Yet knowing that a college roommate picked up takeout Chinese at the place we always used to go makes us feel a little closer and removes some of the space between us. Or sending lots of little one-line notes with someone you are working on a problem with keeps the process going and lets collaboration happen regardless of physical space.

And, as we create these new tools for creating our bonds, other things are going to happen. That's what Twitter's investors - Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Marc Andreessen (of Netscape fame) and Dick Costolo (FeedBurner founder/acquired by Google), Ron Conway (early Google funder), and Naval Ravikant (serial entrepreneur - Epinions and many others) - are surely hoping. Create a set of tools to connect people. Let people expand on those tools. And then sit back and watch and let the byproducts of human interaction create ... well, what it creates remains to be seen.

Maybe someday I'll Twitter. But in the meantime I will be watching Twitter. And so should you, because this shift in the way we connect with each other isn't going away and it's only begun to write its story.

10:00pm. Writing. Honest. This time am really writing. Twitter and out.