Twitter isn’t new, not even to me. I tried it, and couldn’t get what all the fuss was about.

Interestingly, I read Scott Hanselman’s post a few weeks ago, and figured I’d give it another go. I’ve been using it for almost a month now, and I’m finding that I’m not alone when I say that after a second look, I finally see the value in it.

I think the problem is that it’s explained as a micro-blog, and so it spawns imagery of “I’m at the Belgian for a beer if you want to join me.” kind of posts. This is one side of Twitter, but I believe the real value comes from applying Rule 2 from Scott’s post: Search.

All of a sudden, the focus shifts, and it’s no longer about only seeing tweets from the people you follow. Now you’re part of a larger conversation, and this is where hashtags come in. By searching on hashtags that you’re interested in you can take part of a geographically disconnected conversation in real time about whatever it is that interests you.

For example, I currently have searches in my TweetDeck on:

#PowerShell
#Ashes
#Win7
“#MDT 2010″ OR “SCCM 2007″

Popular hashtags can be seen here.

I’ve been on Facebook for a while now, and whereas I love seeing the updates from friends, and what everyone is up to, I really have no time for all the other gaming and features that seem to fill up my profile. To me, Twitter is the useful status feature of Facebook, but in a real time.

So, thanks to Scott for his post, and if you find yourself on Twitter feel free to add me: http://www.twitter.com/leadfollowmove