On Twitter’s Topic Track

Yes, I like alliterations – so sue me.

But back to the point at hand. I’m a recent convert to the wonderfully ADD-riddled world of Twitter. While a lot of tweets are horribly lame, all it takes (for a web junkie like me, anyways) is one visit to the http://www.twittervision.com to be convinced of the flood of topical, local information that a service like Twitter is managing on a constant basis.

So it makes perfect sense, then, that Twitter would build an opt-in feature that allows users to “follow” or track topics instead of your alcoholic friend with a, ahem, handsy problem while under the influence. Wanna know what people are saying about Halo3? Track it on Twitter! Wanna find out the latest dish on Stanford? Watch the tweets, baby.

As an experiment, I signed up to track “Stanford” and expected a deluge of lame tweets from sketchy grad students complaining about their helmet reflectors. Or something.

Instead, I’ve read two tweets about people bitching about the Stanford Facebook Apps class. Sweet! Now that is useful information. The third tweet was someone trying to use Twitter as Craigslist by listing an apartment rental. Sneaky!

I’ll report more as I get lambasted with tweets over the next few days.