Welcome to 2008.

I was thinking recently, about Twitter and how it's really become the only social network that I regularly use. I decided to take a closer look at the platform and think about why I prefer Twitter over Facebook or Pownce or Jaiku. Yes, I like the mobility of being able to connect to it from my phone or the web or aim, and I like the simplicity of communicating in 140 characters but what I *love* about twitter is the community of people in it.

When I thought about it, I realized that Twitter is the first social network or "socnet" as many of us now call them, populated first by people of my own age. And it's not just Gen X, Baby Boomers and beyond in twitter - there are plenty of younger peeps using it. Speaking for myself, I have built a solid following of likeminded professionals that I "tweet" with every day, whom are my peers. That is very unique for a social network thus far. What is it, when you think about it, is a club. A meeting place, a hang out, a group of compatriots - but a virtual club - meeting at any time you choose. A proverbial treehouse where you can always find a friend inside.

These "tweets" or short dialogue conversations among people, have truly differentiated Twitter for me, because it's finally a "socnet" where people seem like, well, *people*. They aren't just bands who automatically "friend" me or profile pages with colorful widgets and photo albums, they are real time conversations with real people.

What twitter has done, is taken the chat room/bulletin board concept and made it accessible to many people globally and portable. Connecting and communicating from anywhere with large groups of people. That is HUGE. It's changing everything, for me. It's widening my circle of friends, contacts, knowledge, interests, thought processes and more.

Today, The Washington Post talked about the power behind Twitter, featuring the Frozen Pea Movement that I previewed for you just as it started. As of this afternoon, The Frozen Pea Fund had raised $7,171 for breast cancer research.

Not too shabby for a buncha socnet geeks;)

I'm excited to be a part of a new community movement online, that started in Twitter. Last week, two of my Twitter friends, Connie Reece and Laura Fitton, started tweeting about PEA-vatars. The next thing I knew, I looked at my Twitter page and it was populating with Twitter friends who also featured avatars with peas. I learned that the PEA-vatars were being adopted for fellow Twitterer and bloggerSusan Reynolds, whom had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. Susan had changed her avatar to a photo of a package of frozen peas and explained that the meaning behind the image was that she used a bag of frozen peas on her sore breast after several biopsies. To show my support for this member of our Twitter community, I quickly jumped aboard and created my own PEAvatar.

Not even a week has passed and peas abound in Twitter avatars. Connie Reece and Laura Fitton and a few others no doubt, even created a "PEAple" Twitter account, which they are asking members of the community to "follow" and they use to share news about Susan and the PEA-movement. On December 21st, The Frozen Pea Fund will go live, and anyone will be able to donate money via this site to help raise money for breast cancer research.

I'm excited to be a part of this real-life, positive social media movement. I think this is great example of how a global community can connect to support each other for no reason other than helping someone who needs support.

I'll keep you posted on our progress but I hope you'll join in and participate!

Give PEAs a chance:)