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A Few Characters About TwitterFive things I have learned from Twitter.

By John DickersonPosted Friday, April 24, 2009, at 1:12 PM ET

Twitter logo.There's been a lot of talk about Twitter recently, which is a shame because my biggest hope for Twitter had been that it would spark a brevity movement. I'm not here to defend Twitter or run it down. (Or there is a third option: knocking it while using Twitter to boost my career.) I do have some 140-character observations, though:

1. It feels good when I stop: You don't have to sign up for Twitter. If you do, don't follow boring people if you don't want to be bored.

2. Meet the audience: I linked to an amazing NYT slide show of an ambush in Afghanistan. The wife of one of the soldiers responded and I back.

3. Many people you've heard of are boring. People you've never heard of aren't.

4. The swarm poetry of all this Twittering can be charming. One string of words, "stoked tattoo teabag tears," may also be in a Tom Waits song.

5. The time I spend with Twitter shrinks because of the books, music, writing, podcasts, and other things I've learned about on Twitter.

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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at . Follow him on Twitter.
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