I was surprised to learn via an e-mail from a friend that my post yesterday about the election-night community experience of using Twitter became the basis of a story in this morning’s Nashville Tennessean. (Admittedly, I was more surprised that my ego-trackers did not catch it first.)

I’m a bit amused by the headline, “Local blogger turns on to Twitter during New Hampshire primaries” as it captures the addictive nature of using Twitter in such a context. Fact is, I’ve been turned onto Twitter for a long time as it has merely extended (and replaced) ways I’ve previously participated in conversational communities. For those who may wonder, why Twitter? I’ll say, it works for me — now. It has attracted a critical mass of early users among individuals I know online. Also, the key features of selecting how to receive and send messages (via text, IM, etc.) make it a drop-dead simple method of relaying messages if you’re a person (like me) who moves from browser to e-mail client to IM to mobile device constantly.

As I have many off-line friends who will read the print version of the Tennessean, I am already prepared for the type of comment I get whenever I show up in a story like this: “Hey, I read that story about you doing that whatch-a-ma-callit thing.”