Twitter has been getting lots of press lately.

I opened a Twitter account in October 2007, and put it on my blog, so that my tweets would appear in the sidebar, and so that I could feel with-it. It’s still there, and I am marginally with-it. 

But I was rapidly losing interest in Twitter, with my tweets fewer and farther between. I used a widget to post, so I didn’t need to go to the actual Twitter site. But it still felt like too much effort.

Then, last December, I discovered Ping.fm, which enabled me to post directly from my iChat window, which is always open anyway. And not only post to Twitter, but to Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and elsewhere at the same time. Very, very simple. 

But even then, I felt alone. I wasn’t following anybody, like a real Twitterer should. It was just me, uttering 140-character proclamations into cyberspace. But during the past week, two things happened that rejuvenated my interest in Twitter.

• I began experimenting with some other Twitter clients. One of them, Lounge, is wonderful. 
• I began discovering friends and acquaintances who Twitter, and began actually following people’s Tweets. 26 people so far (and looking for more). 

Lounge is a great way to follow people. I keep the window open all the time, next to my iChat window, and new tweets appear as people submit them. 

So now, I’m using Twitter the way it’s supposed to be used–as a highly efficient time-waster with a user-friendly interface perfectly designed to continually distract me from what I should be doing.