Not that I have anything against the frivolous nature of Twitter, but there certainly are more practical ways of deploying the application, as Diana Mounter points out.

This might come as a surprise to some, but the office of the British Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, is one entity leading the way, in its use of Twitter to communicate with the British media and community.

Twitter offers an alternative method to alert and converse with the media and the community. I noticed that Downing Street were getting some questions posted by their Twitter followers and number 10 were replying via Twitter. This means that if one person asks a question everyone can see the answer, it makes the communication to the outside world more transparent and means that at least with your Twitter followers you don’t need to answer the same question twice.