My mother likes to know what I’m doing. Where I am. What the weather’s like in my corner of Brooklyn.

The more recent the news, the better. The more minute the detail, the better. The more mundane the subject, the better.

Boy, would Mom love Twitter.

Twitter is a new Web 2.0 fad that allows you to stay constantly connected to your friends through SMS, IM and website feeds. You create a network of friends, and then wait for them to publish 140-character missives to their Twitter feeds. Those missives show up on your phone / IM / website, whatever you choose. It’s community micro-blogging that automatically streams to your device.

For example, I created a mrhausman Twitter account. I added BarakObama and Rocketboom as my friends (Barak because I’m a fan, Rocketboom because they started out at Studio Guild, the progressive office space I run in NYC). Whenever Barak, Rocketboom or I post a new tidbit, it appears on my badge (to the left).

The vast majority of Twitter posts are answers to the question, “What are you doing?” Meaning, what are you doing RIGHT NOW. Examples:

jrowett: watching the news to see tony blair
Calv1n: HOLY SHIT….the show Lost makes sense now
moewe: 最近は花粉がすごい。耳までかゆくなるから困る。

You may be asking, Why? Why would I want my all my friends’ randomest, immediate thoughts streaming to my screen? Who could possibly want that much empty-calorie human contact?

Answer: Japanese schoolgirls. And possibly my mother.

Whether Twitter offers anything useful to progressive organizers remains to be seen. My friend Nica Lorber at Skyline Public Works is experimenting with it now. And the presidential campaigns are a-Twittering away. I imagine it being useful during direct actions — networks of feeds all alerting activists where the cops are blockading streets, which intersections are vulnerable, etc.

But for the daily organizing work of most campaigns, Twitter is at best another low-touch push medium. At worst, its a further slide towards short, thoughtless, urgent communications that satisfy our need for contact, but are empty of meaningful content.

That’s not the kind of communication I want … but I guess I’m not a mother!