If you’d told me I would be writing this post a week ago, I would have laughed in your face. In fact, not just laughed: I would have up rolled up my sleeves, thrown back my head, gripped something solid nearby and launched into the most gargantuan, belly-propelling and unsociable chortle you’d ever have the misfortune to be in the same room as. If you don’t believe me, read my recent post.

I was smugly content in my detachment (detwachment?), utterly convinced of my motives, happy to wallow in the splendid isolation afforded by my deeply entrenched opinion that Twitter was nothing but a waster of time, an expender of energy, a wholly unnecessary window on my increasingly crowded desktop.

Out of the 190 contacts in my non-business Yahoo mail account, only five were signed up to Twitter and most of them, in my opinion, were unlikely to fill out a sign-up form any time soon. What possible use, therefore did I have for an account? Why did I want to be Twittering away about exactly how bad I felt that Monday morning or just how well-received my recent cappuccino had been? How in God’s name would I ever achieve the mentality of wanting to do this on a regular basis?

And as for Twitter being a business tool - come again? Even in this barrier-dissolving age, I wanted to keep some semblance of a traditional client-customer relationship, thank you very much. Twitter could surely only lead to accidentally breached agreements, leaked opinions, compromised confidences and an awareness that your professional front was now riddled with cracks opened by your meaningless splutterances prompted by the cute blue bird.

Let the Twitter revolution happen, I thought; let everyone else go through the motions of getting into it, getting bored with it, and then moving on to the next thing. Mark my words, I nodded sagely, it will happen and I’ll be the first to say ‘well I did try to tell you’.

But then something snapped inside me. Perhaps it was death-by-isn’t-Twitter-great-articles. Perhaps it was a guilty twang of acknowledgement that, despite the fact I’d had a Twitter account for many months, I hadn’t really given it a go. Not really. I’d written it off without actually opening the bonnet and checking out the parts. If I’d been searching for a house, this was akin to deciding not to buy on the strength of its appearance on Google Maps.

So, in a selfless surge of activity last weekend, I threw myself into Twitterland. I sorted my profile. I uploaded a photo that offered me up in my most friendly-and-eternally-grateful-if-you’ll-follow-me pose. I looked up some other peoples’ profiles. I hunted around for some famous people I knew to be on Twitter, like Stephen Fry and John Cleese.

Pleased to have a more rounded presence in this new world, I then stepped into the world of Twitter applications. Oh, I see! Oh right! Aha! And various other, less British exclamations, all to the crashing soundtrack of a thousand dropping pennies. So this is how you organise this thing. This is how it works. It isn’t just a directionless excuse for a natter over the garden e-wall. Suddenly, I realised that I held in my hand the key to the world’s biggest and most focused networking group. Here was a sounding board with an accumulatory knowledge depth more everlasting than the Pacific. Here were people who were interested in the same things I was interested in; who bothered and blogged about the same stuff I bothered and blogged about.

Suddenly, courtesy of Twitterpacks and Tweetscan as well as other countless applications and tools containing T and W, I could hand-select from a deep well of like-minded and fascinating individuals, from freelancers to CEOs, from most corners of the globe. No job interview, no permission, no email, no introduction from an insider, no phone call; just a free pass into their world and their thoughts. Suddenly I could target new customers; I could syphon at will from an endless pool of learning; I could aspire to best practice from the great and good on Planet Twitter. Perhaps I’m still basking in a newbie glow; perhaps veteran Tweeters are so adjusted to this state of being that it’s all now so normal. But whatever, this is a miraculous, life-changing and genuinely incredible thing that to my mind throws up so many more possibilities than blogging ever did.

Twitter, and micro-blogging in general, is an extraordinary thing that blows away all traditional notions of marketing. My head is straining to anticipate its potential and predict where it can go. It’s revolutionary, and I urge anyone still unconvinced to dive headlong in. I felt like the last one to know, but in the grand scheme of things, we’re all at the start.