is twitter the new inbox

I have been using Twitter alot lately. I find it helpful to broadcast my message to a large group of “followers” as well as keep tabs on my friends and what is on their minds. But, Outlook and email are by far my primary means of communication.

I have also been getting more Facebook messages lately, which I hate. I usually reply with “send me an email instead” so I can factor in my reponse with all my other stuff I need to do.

Yesterday, I met Cameron Reilly for the first time. He runs www.thepodcastnetwork.com and came in to interview me abot Gist (www.gist.com). He told me he has stopped using email as he has over 600 unread messages in his inbox. He now uses Twitter to communicte with his close friends using “DMs” or direct messages. This is really interesting to me.

Is it that only his close friends are on twitter, therefore he only gets “important” messages? Is it the blend of broadcast and direct messages which is appealing?

Last night, I also got some DMs from my friends Kathy Gill, who is a very Web 2.0 person. She also chose to send me messages on Twitter instead of email. In her case, I think my tweets sparked a memory that she wanted to get back to me, which caused the action.

I am not sure how this is trending, but since I am a messaging guy (email, IM, Twitter, FB, SMS…) I think this is something to watch.