To be, or not to be? That doesn't seem to be the question, if you look at Twitter.com. The question is: What are you doing? That's what Twitter is asking, and the answer to that question is what everyone is talking about right now. You can’t read a blog or listen to a news report these days without hearing about some "tweet" that the writer or announcer got that day that piqued his interest.

Twitter describes itself as "a free service that lets you keep in touch with people through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" You only get a small amount of space to answer that question, but that is actually a good thing. You have to be concise and direct, which makes sense, since they also call it "microblogging."

CNN is using it live on their news broadcasts to talk to viewers. Retailers are talking to their customers anywhere in the world to troubleshoot problems or respond to happy customers. Even NASA's Mars Rover sends updates on Twitter!

Well, here on planet Earth, I can tell you what I'm doing right now, and that's writing a blog post. I just recorded the next installment of the Global Supply Chain Podcast. What was I doing a year ago? I certainly didn't think I'd be blogging. I didn't even totally understand how blogs worked. And podcasting? I didn’t even own an iPod until last year.

But these new things I'm doing have been really amazing. I can publish something and get it to an audience incredibly fast. People respond to it, and the only editor is myself. I get to share my thoughts on the business world, and talk to you about what you see going on out there.

And now I'm excited to get started on Twitter as the next big thing. I know that some folks tend to go overboard with new technology such as Twitter, wrongly thinking that it will magically solve their relationship and business problems and becoming addicted to it at the expense of face-to-face interaction. But you can’t deny a good communications tool when you see it. There's tons of people and groups on Twitter that are talking about supply chain topics, business strategies, and thought leadership. For those of you already using Twitter, I hope you click the "Follow" button on my account.

Are you using Twitter? Let me know by following me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jimtompkins. Recent updates are below.