Many of you may already be familiar with Twitter, a micro-blogging tool that enables you to post 140 characters and broadcast that post to thousands of people across lots of networks. The process is much like other social networks: After creating an account, you can follow other people - and they can follow you. You post a "tweet" to your own Twitter "feed" and, presto!, your message goes out to the world. You can post and read tweets using the Web, a handful of desktop applications, instant messaging or even your mobile phone.

Unlike other services, it's relatively easy to keep your Twitter feed private, so you can post details about what you're working on to only a select group of coworkers or friends.

Once Twitter launched, many (many!) Twitter-related applications followed. You can post your "tweets" chat-style using twhirl. You can enable your blog to automatically send your most recent entry to your Twitter feed using twitterfeed. And if you really want to see Twitter's global reach, check out Twittervision. You can follow people in multiple languages anywhere in the world - or it will automatically display random "tweets" every 10 seconds. It's absolutely mesmerizing!

Recently I spent some time discussing Twitter with a journalism student at American University in Washington, D.C. She noted that her friends use Twitter as a way to stay in touch while they're in classes or out socializing at night. Rather than sending a text message, it's easier to send tweets to all of her friends, she says. She was surprised that some news organizations are now using Twitter as a way to update people on new stories. Examples include the New York Times, CNN and others. (If you'd like to give Twitter a whirl, have a look at the news organizations I'm following.)

I must admit, I'm a bit surprised at how news orgs are using Twitter, too. It makes sense to use Twitter when urgent news is breaking or to help folks follow an important story. But I get several new tweets from the New York Times throughout the day, every day. How much journalism can you accomplish in 140 characters? I'm typically sent a link and am not usually inclined to click over to the Times' Web site.

On the other hand, I think that Twitter might serve as a useful reporting tool. In some cases, it could streamline the communication process between one editor/producer and several reporters. For example, if reporters are covering a fire, they could all receive communication via mobile phone from a remote editor's office. Or they could send immediate content straight to their editors or producers. Lots of applications are possible.

But I'd like to know what you think - and to hopefully generate a discussion here. What are your thoughts on Twitter? Does it have a place in journalism?