The blogosphere is abuzz with talk about Twitter. I admit that I was initially skeptical. Are there really that many narcissists out there who think their lives are interesting enough to warrant real-time updates? On the other side of the equation, are there really that many voyeurs interested in such mundane drivel? What a stupid idea. Or so I thought.

I couldn’t believe that people would post with enough frequency to keep the system interesting. Neither could I believe that people would follow each update with rapt attention. Then it hit me: people already do these things.

With AIM, people will often be “away” just for the sake of posting a comment on their present condition. Completing the system, people will check other people’s away messages just to find out what they’re up to at the moment. Twitter provides the same basic functionality except with a much-improved interface. Since similar systems have been around for many years, it is reasonable to assume that Twitter will also survive.

The question becomes: what’s next? The first entrant to a category isn’t necessarily the one that will prevail in the long term. I would like to see an expansion that gives comments spatial tags in addition to temporal ones. I would like to see the comments become enabled with multimedia.

Imagine that it is Saturday night. You’re in a big city trying to find a club for you and your friends to party. You pull out your cell phone and check the latest twitters from locations less than four blocks from your own. One catches your eye; it has an associated video. The video, shot with a camera phone moments earlier, shows a hot party, packed with people. As you and your friends arrive at the club, you post your own twitter about that night’s ‘it’ spot. Others notice the large number of twitters from the location and also join the fun.

It’s been done, but the existing solutions leave something to be desired.