NEW YORK ? Let?s see. You have Facebook and other social networking sites so you can keep up with ?friends? you don?t know. You have RSS feeders on top of your news aggregators. You have video/TV streaming online. You have cable service with 200 channels, 40 in HD and 40 hours of recorded shows you haven?t watched. You have iPhone apps and podcast subscriptions and music you downloaded illegally but not bothered to listen to. You have both online and PS3 games. You have Internet on your phone.

What else did we miss ? oh, your life? What life?!

What else can you waste your time with these days? We almost forgot... there?s Twitter, a social messaging utility you can use to stay connected in real time. By real time, we mean you can now officially let your life pass you by in real time.

And you know why you will use it? Because everybody thinks it?s cool; well, at least the mainstream media makes you think it?s cool.

Soon enough, the marketing world will catch up and sell you anything from teeth-whitening products to Viagra.

You can thank Oprah for endorsing it.

It has been reported that a million people have signed up and many a blog linked to Hitwise data suggest that Oprah?s endorsement of the service has given it a 43-percent lift in traffic over the past few weeks, even if she was not twittering.

Matter of time

So it is just a matter of time before all of us go a-Twittering? Well, not so fast.

David Martin, VP-primary research at Nielsen Online, writes in the Nielsen blog that ?currently, more than 60 percent of US Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter?s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month?s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent.?

Another compelling argument against it is its current low retention rate: ?It will only reach about 10 percent of online consumers,? says Martin. So hold on to those media buys.

So who actually thinks Twitter is gaining so much headway out there? The American media and marketing world stand to gain the most from it which is why it is serving as its No. 1 promoter? for a very good reason. Because with real-time capability, they can guarantee you don?t miss anything.

But how does it compare to traditional methods, like picking up the phone or texting people directly? You can still do those things in private unless that is not the point, of course?

Or you can blog, which means you share more, not just what you can spare, in 140 characters or less. With blogging, you sit down, gather your thoughts and proceed to write what you hope passes for coherence with substance. There is an attempt, valid or not, to be of value to the reader ? and to yourself; it trains you to think.

What do you get?

With Twitter?s text limitations, what do the Twitterer and Twitteree actually get? If you?re an entrepreneur, you have another method to reach your customer. If you look at it as a revolutionary ?ISM,? it can pretty much sound like what Kevin Kelly of Wired Magazine says forms part of a new collectivist movement; others being Facebook, Wikipedia and Flickr, unless those online companies think Twitter is not in their league.

If you?re a consumer, you may think of it as another distraction ? either good or bad ?coming your way. And for the cultural literati, you may say Twitter is not just a complete waste of time, it is offensive to your sensibilities. The outcry? How dare Twitter simplify everything?!

If not simplify everything, the outcry could be that it?s too free-flowing as it is, and that Twitterers should at least put interesting content, especially when Twittering among family and friends can be interrupted by other Twitterers using it as promotion tool to spam or phish you.

So if you believe in quality over quantity, Twitter may not be good for you. Other people, however, will contend that it works for them because the messaging happens in real time on a grand scale, thereby saving them time to reach their intended audience.

But how can people embrace the invasion to their privacy, every minute, every second?

Self-stalking

Social media may be breeding a new psychological malaise-self-stalking, commonly known as self-absorption. A Twitterer announces what he or she is doing, and his chosen Twitterers or ?followers? can choose to respond to it. It is a similar function to Facebook?s, except that we assume you actually know the people in there, having added or they added you as ?friend.?

In both cases, you have an open invitation for people to find out what you are doing, or more clinically, to stalk you.

So far, the Twitter business model raises more questions than answers. ?Why would you want anyone to know your every move?? ?Why would you want to know what a particular person is doing?? Amid all this frenzy is a freaky question that begs to be answered: ?Are you stalking yourself and other people??

Celebrity, paparazzi tool

Some people justify their reason for Twittering. John McCain and Shaquille O? Neal (on half-time breaks, at least) Twitter because they are prominent people who think they need to address their audience. Ashton Kutcher going by aplusk as his username probably knows more how he can use it cheekily. It can be recalled that he challenged CNN who can get the first one million followers, and he won.

But how can you be sure they are the real deal? Kutcher had to employ another medium, the immensely popular youtube.com, to make his Twitter dare not a punk?d affair but a serious one. And what about those Twitterers who thought they were exchanging rap sheets with Kanye West? His Rap Highness recently used his blog (a vehement non-Twitterer) to rant against Twitter and three impostors for pretending to be him.

Should these celebs be Twittering? There may be more effective venues to reach their audience. There?s the traditional media, which still garner the most number of audience. The perils for celebs are high. As what happened to West, somebody can easily pose as you and use your name in vain.

You can also get misquoted, especially since the site?s limited characters only give you a few words to make sure you send the right message. Can you express your thoughts clearly in 140 characters or will a strongly worded response get you in trouble? But then again, some celebs will take advantage of anything that will keep them in the public eye.

This has explosive potential for the paparazzi, if Twitter gets any bigger. Imagine knowing where a celeb is, and they swarm right away to the sighting. Also imagine how some celebs can fall out of favor with other celebs if they spread leaks ? for money or infamy ? to showbiz hounds. Remind us to rename Twitter as a paparazzi messaging utility in real time.

Unregulated chatter

For now, being fairly new, Twitter can fly under the radar without too much regulation and rants. The law always plays catch-up with new technology. Remember when Youtube was getting flak, three years ago, from big media companies about the legality of its video postings? But media companies couldn?t do anything about it, because the technology was becoming a craze and nobody wanted to be left behind.

Now that Twitter is gaining traction and free media mileage, lawmakers will play catch-up again.

If there?s any clear winner here, it won?t be the consumers but the media and marketing machinery. Aren?t we all easy prey? Fun always comes with a price and new social media technology will always be sold to us as if it were a crutch, as if every new one would connect us best to people.

But you won?t mind. Even if you did, Twitter will have become too big. You will justify it as one more addition to your already hectic life.

You will defend it because in 140 characters, you think you can be someone special to the rest of the world. But ? will you be to the people who really matter?