Twitter as IM Status

I have been baffled by Twitter for some time now. Rich Bowen finally explained it:

Twitter appears to be a hosted blog service. Nothing more nor less. The only thing innovative about it is that it limits your postings to 90 characters, and thus encourages you to post less, more frequently.

When I started traveling frequently about a year ago I started updating my IM status message to include my location so friends would have some idea where I was. I also used to include what I was listening to in iTunes (I should find that plugin again). So I suppose we’ve all been twittering via IM status for a while now, though not with the publicity and frequency that Twitter encourages. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that some creative folks have put together plugins for Adium that allow synching of your Twitter and IM status. I’m not convinced I’ll start using Twitter yet, but at least I get it now.