Ever feel the need to vent, pontificate, or share that interesting link without having to bother with an extended blog post? Then microblogging tools like Twitter can provide you with just the platform to share and receive those important (though at times prosaic) bits of conversations, relevant URLs, breaking news, or salient commentary from ever-watchful web denizens, or close friends.

If you haven’t tried Twitter then now is a good time to experiment. It’s simple to use, has scores of applications associated with it, and can enhance that almost-synchronous connections with friends and followers. You can reply one-on-one via private messages, or reply to another person so anyone can see your response. Twitter has improved quite a bit in the past few months; why don’t you start “following” friends, interesting personalities, or your favorite Web 2.0 enterprise? Here are some helpful links to get you started:

• Companies & institutions (from media to businesses to libraries) who use Twitter.
• Twitter applications (web, phone, text, & desktop based applications). There are, literally, dozens of Twitter applications so experiment with a few and see which one tickles your fancy. I prefer Google’s BeTwittered for my iGoogle page, and a Firefox extension called TwitterFox.
• News & posts related to, and about, Twitter and the “top” twitterers.
• I’m on Twitter as m3mo. If you have questions about it, I’d be happy to help. Just click the “follow” (once you sign up for a profile) link below my avatar and I’ll return the favor–then let’s converse!