From WNYKYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is away this week. I'm Bob Garfield.

It wasn't that long ago that the mini-blogging application Twitter was at least as big a punchline as it was a social media utility.

This week, Twitter!

For the uninitiated, here's how Twitter works.

I have no fucking idea.

I have no idea how it works.

Or why it is.

Well, there is something kind of hilarious about people constantly interrupting their lives to transmit 140 character factoids and

random banal thoughts to people who must interrupt their own lives to receive them.

Or, anyway, it was hilarious way back in 2009 when the Daily Show made fun of it.

In 2010, there are in excess of 75 million Twitterers, 15 million of them, active ones,

sending out more than a billion tweets per month.

Last week in New York City, Twitterers from the world over gathered at the 140-character conference

to consider how all this chirping is

changing their lives and ours too. I went over there, but first wanted to check with this guy

I know who is a very satisfied Twitter bug. It's a way that people use to make sense of a very complicated world.

David Carr covers media for the New York Times.

In that maddening moment when you're standing at Starbucks, right,

and the person just won't make your latte no matter what you do,

all of a sudden you drift off into Twitter,

and when you look up five minutes later and your drink is finally done, you're a little bit smarter for it.

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