As Twitter ends a creaky week of sporadic downtime, BusinessWeek has an article on Why Twitter Matters and explores the potential for it to emerge into a 'social media powerhouse'. The piece comes complete with its own Twittered back story too.

Don't get me wrong, I think Twitter is great. It's so simple. So easy. So low overhead. How many other tasks in my day actually get completed in just a few seconds?

After a few false starts, Twitter has come to serve a clear purpose for me. Twitter is where I unburden myself of snarky views (mostly about politicians), banal observations (often that's the best I can do), shameless self-promotion, and lightweight comments that clearly won't stand up to any more than 140 characters of analysis.

But that's a good thing. Twitter is the spittoon in my Internet saloon bar. It's for thinking out loud, without any consequences.

However, as Business Week suggests: Twitter as a social media powerhouse?

I wouldn't bet on it. Isn't it just a great feature looking for a more permanent home? (and preferably one attached to a revenue model). Rather than being a sustainable community, or an extensible platform?

And, as Peter said in an earlier post, when Twitter picks up on a news story, it actually makes the case for why we do need journalists and professional media to parse and present fragmented news into coherent story for us.

Tags: Twitter, BusinessWeek, spittoons

And, sorry about the headline. One for Frankie Howard buffs.