Earlier today, a friend sent me a link to a cute graphic about coffee. She sent it via email, because she thought I would like it. I did, when I came across it about a week ago and tweeted about it. I jokingly chastised her for not being on Twitter, to which she responded, "I don't have time for Twitter."

In my opinion, the beauty of Twitter is that it is gives us the option to pay attention to neat musings such as the coffee article, or not to. When she emailed me the coffee link, the option of whether to pay attention and spend time or not to on this article was taken away from me. With Twitter, if I have time to look at cool articles or blogs that pertain to my interests (mostly triathlon and entrepreneurship), I go on Twitter and see what interesting things people have posted. If I don't want to be bothered, I'm not.

Most people say they have no use for Twitter because it is mostly useless crap about what people are doing on a daily basis, and for the most part, most of what we do is not worth reading about. However, if my friends travel to interesting places or see interesting things and take pictures of them, or meet interesting people, or read interesting blogs or articles, I like to hear about it. If people post mundane things that aren't interesting to me, I don't 'follow' them. Either way, it is my choice on who I follow, and whether I even spend time looking at what they've posted or not. (This also differentiates it from Facebook, where if I don't want someone's "status" to show up in my "feed" the easiest way is to de-friend them, which is a pretty serious social faux pas.)

The other reason I use Twitter is that it gives you a glimpse at what people in a certain industry, or especially leaders in a specific industry are spending their time doing and reading. If I want to learn, say, about Kickboxing, within a few minutes of searching I can find out who the highest regarded people in the industry are, what they spend their time doing, and what information sources they value enough to spend their time reading (blogs or articles).

So stop knocking Twitter as a waste of time, or another social networking phenomenon that will die out. Stop using email for links to things you think are humorous or interesting, because chances are, if it is something that I'm really interested in, I've already seen it on Twitter. If not, put it on Twitter yourself, and I'll look at it when I have time.