[cpr]

I think if you're a social "hub" yourself, such as an Arrington or a Gruber, it's ideal.

If you're a techie who needs to actually get work done on hard technical problems, it's a total disaster, time- and distraction-wise.

One analogy would be the tech pundit (forget whom it was) who said reading the NYT at breakfast would send him into a mental maelstrom for the rest of the day, on overload. Twitter is like 100 micro-NYTs. ;-)

At least that's my (admittedly short stabs of, now and then) experience.

[Edit:] I suppose if you had a reasonably-sized close group of associates who only twittered a few times a day, you could keep it under control as a 'water cooler' experience.

[dennismoulton]

So in your case....dealing with a hard technical problem the current establishment of forums for richer discussions and interaction could leverage the power of community, no? Would a microblog version of what is now specific forums be enough of an experience to handle the majority of what needs to be covered? Would you be willing to participate in this manner if there was an extra step to finding the specific conversation home (within the platform) for the request, question, or dialogue?