Twitter, Tweeting, TweetDeck -- all fairly new terms known by few but being tried and tested by many. In candor, we're all still learning how to use Twitter meaningfully rather than to simply tell the world we had a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast.
What's interesting is that once you start using TweetDeck to manage your tweets, you start to see where the future's heading. Incredibly slick interface created in Adobe AIR, that allows for complete user customization. What's best is that it runs in the background, updates in real-time and integrates your Facebook posts and the ability to post to Facebook directly into the console's interface.
A subtle beep notifies you that one of your Friends (people you're following) has a new posting. Read or don't read it, it will be there to scroll through later. Pretty quickly you learn that if you look at new posts 1x per hour, you can read all of your friends' tweets within a couple of minutes. On top of the game, without wasting time...
The reason I believe Twitter will ultimately increase our collective productivity:
1) People will be need to learn to communicate a key thought or summary within 140 characters (or less) if they expect to provide value to friends, family and other followers. If you can't communicate efficiently or provide value, you'll quickly be unfollowed....
2) Right now TweetDeck integrates Facebook because it's the biggest and most popular social network in the world. I have to imagine that LinkedIn will be integrated later this summer. Why is this important? I can now get information from two sites (and I'm sure more soon), that I would normally need to log into separately, pushed to me in real-time. I can also simultaneously post to both sites. I no longer need to choose to which site to post an update, nor replicate postings across social networks. Efficiency.
3) Integration and efficiency fuel interaction. Because it's now easier and a better experience to both read and write posts, I want to participate more often. Interaction fuels both frequency and proficiency of posts, as I learn from others and my own efforts how to communicate more valuably.
4) Finally, searching for people, creating groups and being able to segment messages to specific audiences has to be coming down the road. Once you have the ability to do all these from one console, you'll have a communication platform to publish whatever you want to whoever you want, whenever you want.
The future of Twitter and Tweetdeck promise open access, with ultimate flexibility and customization -- or in other words, laissez-faire communication. Adam Smith would be proud.