I’m fairly willing to try new technologies. But I’m not exactly what marketers call an “early adopter” since I like to see a trend prove its worth before jumping on board.

This was the case with Twitter.

Even though it seems that everyone and their grandma is now using the service, surprisingly few actually know what it does. Basically, Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that let’s you broadcast real-time snippets of text, called “tweets.”

These tweets can be anything: what you’re having for lunch. A link to an interesting article. Your current mood.

If it sounds like plenty of (mostly) irrelevant information, then you’re right. Our world is already clogged with incessant chatter from blogs, Myspace pages, websites, forums, etc.

I was hesitant to jump on the bandwagon because I felt it was just another online presence to maintain, and I scarcely have time to devote on projects that matter.

Eventually, I gave in. And no, not because David Bowie has an account.

I finally realized that Twitter doesn’t suck time. It saves time.

Consider that this blog post allows me to ruminate on why I joined Twitter in an expanded format. It took me approximately 45 minutes to craft and publish.

Alternately, I could have just posted a line on Twitter that would instantly broadcast a similar, though brief, message to my followers.

Approximate time spent: 6 seconds.

Of course, there are many other benefits of Twitter. The immediacy of crowd sourcing. The value of ambient awareness. The lexicon of Twitter-spawned phrases like “Twits” and “Tweeps.”

But if you’re someone who has a need to share online, but lacks the time or focus to develop a lengthy blog, Twitter is your tool.

Hurry up and join already.

Photo jahdakinebrah

A recent article in the Vancouver Sun, in partnership with NowPublic, lists Vancouver’s most visible web personalities.

The list includes blogger staples like Travis Smith, Kris Krug, Miss 604, and at number one: Darren Barefoot.

Topping the list in Vancouver is 34-year-old writer and marketer Darren Barefoot. His blog – in combination with his presence on Flickr and Twitter – draws about 10,000 readers daily.

Barefoot’s online opinions vary from the professional to the personal on topics ranging from the environment and poverty to politics and pop culture.

Hey, that’s similar to the things I write about! Maybe there’s hope for me making the list among the ranks of Vancouver’s finest someday.

I was somewhat surprised to read a tacky post by correction: Dale Mugford, writing for MatthewGood.org, who wonders why their site wasn’t in the top 5. In the grand scheme, what’s more important: occasional recognition? or having readers return everyday?

Would have been classier to write a congrats to the others on the list and move on.

Update: Jeff Simpson over at MetBlogs Vancouver writes a hilarious critique of the list, which he dubs prime linkbait. (Which it was).

Like most people who enjoy music and are technologically savvy, I have a lot of tracks on my hard drive.

And by that I mean somewhere in the range of 32 gigs. iTunes tells me that I could hit ‘play’ and leave town for 17.3 days, and it would still wouldn’t have played all the available tracks.

That’s a bit ridiculous. Especially considering with a few clicks more, I have access to a seeming unlimited amount of free internet radio stations. I have way more music that I know what to do with.

What a difference from 10 years ago. Remember when your library was constrained by your wallet and the physical limits of the cd rack in your bedroom?

In essence, music has become free (and I don’t mean because your pirated it). It’s abundantly available for very little or no cost. And in most cases, it’s the distributors, not the producers that care. And it’s rapidly becoming the same for TV shows,

Just ask Matt Stone from South Park:

We’re always in favor of people downloading. Always. It’s how a lot of people see the show. And it’s never hurt us. We’ve done nothing but been successful with the show. How could you ever get mad about somebody who wants to see your stuff?

Likewise, a friend of mine would like nothing more than to see his travel show shared around the world to as many new eyeballs as possible. But he sympathizes with the network that pays the bill – pirated tv shows means no ads. No ad money means no show.

So what was the real problem? Web users that demand free stuff or content providers clinging to a quickly aging business model? We wondered how to sides could be reconciled.

Turns out, free is, in fact, the future.

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Trail (great book), lays it out in an article from earlier this year Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business”

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast.

[...] The word is externalities, a concept that holds that money is not the only scarcity in the world. Chief among the others are your time and respect, two factors that we’ve always known about but have only recently been able to measure properly. The “attention economy” and “reputation economy” are too fuzzy to merit an academic department, but there’s something real at the heart of both.

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

That last line has a nice ring to it. And may perhaps be the most society-altering concept of all.