LIVING THE ‘140’ LIFE by Scott Budman

Tweet Deck, Tweet Funnel, Re-Tweet, Tweet-Back . . .  they’re all on display by Tweeple attending “140”, the Twitter conference held right smack in the center of the Silicon Valley.  The location is fitting, given that Twitter itself is pretty much ground zero for everything having to do with communication these days.From the tiny start-up (PeopleBrowsr), to the well-established (Yahoo!), the aptly-named “140” (am I the only one reminded of a U2 song about a Psalm here?) brought all comers together to, in many cases, actually meet face-to-face with the people they’d been hitting up on their Twitter feeds. With handles like @wingdude and @42rulesbooks hanging on the every word of people like @jasoncalacanis (who, by the way, made me feel better about having the pretty boring @scottbudman handle) talk about how to monetize, find a job, and better network with your Twitter account.

If you think you’re all about Twitter now, just wait: There are tons of apps coming down the pike, a la the iPhone, made for you to use when you tweet. And re-tweet. In fact, in the same way we’ve seen entire start-ups (and at least one college class) built around the iPhone apps, look for entire startups built around the Twittersphere to crank up soon. Hey, it worked for Facebook.

It’s safe to say that if you’re going to hang at a conference like 140, you’d better at least buy into the Twitter thing a little. I actually noticed people were speaking to each other in more rapid, shorter, to-the-point sentences than usual. Maybe Twitter is affecting the way we speak, as well as write.

So as not to go on too long myself, I’ll leave with one quick story. After interviewing one Twitterphile, I checked the “140” hashtag to find that same guy had just written, “just talked to @scottbudman .. the ONLY Old media reporter here!”

Thanks. A whole afternoon feeling hip, only to get tagged as old. Made me feel oh, about 140.

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