Are you using Twitter yet? It seems to me that lately everyone is talking about it. I think it's a very cool service, and you can use it quite easily with Skype.

If you haven't heard of Twitter, it's essentially a microblogging / group messaging service--you send a short, 140 character message out (via SMS, the web, a Twitter-specific program, or Skype), and people who elect to follow you will receive that message (in a similar number of ways). Anyone can follow anyone else (though you can set your Twitter updates to private so only those you approve can see them), and all your tweets can be viewed on a single page (here's mine).

Twitter's great because you can use it however you like--I use it primarily as a way to get status updates out to friends, and have those updates synced up to Facebook and Skype. Other people are using it to talk about things that interest them, to share links, to promote what they're doing, to network, to find jobs--the list goes on.

Twitter is easy to use on the go because your message has to be short and there are multiple ways you can send and receive messages from your mobile.

And if you're interested in a particular topic, searching for that topic on Twitter is a great way to see what people are saying. Increasingly news (like that recent plane crash on the Hudson River in NYC) is appearing online first on Twitter.

You can make Skype and Twitter work together in several ways.

• On Windows, you can use Twype or SyncMood to make your most recent tweet become your Skype mood message (just make sure in Skype you say OK to giving the programme access).
• On a Mac, you can link Skype 2.8 Beta to Twitter so that anything you type in your Skype mood message box also shows up on Twitter. It requires some file editing though; Dan York has instructions.
• You can also use Twitter4Skype to send Twitter updates and receive them from people you're following within a Skype window. This option is particularly useful for people with 3 Skypephones or Skype Lite--then you can tweet in a Skype chat rather than having to sent an SMS.

Do you know of any other ways to use Twitter with Skype? Let us know in the comments.