Twitter just received almost $10 million more in funding, and has a reported $50 million in the bank (or perhaps a more secure place, like under the mattress). The company has no revenue, fewer than 30 employees, and has been criticized as being the dumbest idea ever. Yet Twitter remains the hottest company in the wacky world of Silicon Valley start-ups.

Why, I have no idea. I'm trying to refrain from these sort of instant analyses based on nothing more than my personal opinion--you know, the kind of fraudulent thing that guys like Tom Friedman do.

I can only tell you what my experience has been.I can describe, but I won't arrogantly prescribe, if you don't mind.

I admit being put off when I first heard of Twitter. It was positioned as a way for geeks with no social skills to tell each other that they were buying a Diet Coke with their Subway sandwich, or in a Seinfeld-esque way telling people that they were doing nothing except typing their thoughts into Twitter.

Yet those deep thinkers among us realized the profound "meta" insight that Twitter exploits: bird tweets have meaning.

A bird doesn't just sit there and tweet for no reason. Birdsong has long been a venerable field of study for many very smart people, who have identified the wide variety of chirps, cheeps, and extended forms that birds use to communicate location, danger, and amorous and other intentions. The near-infinite variety of birdsong reaches its noblest purpose when birds flock together and act in a societal way.

Analogous to beehive mentality on the one hand and sublime whalesong on the other, twittering has guaranteed the survival of the entire Aves class (thanks, Carl Linneaus) from the time of its emergence as dinosaurs back in the days when I was young and America was still strong.

Thus, Twitter was begat. Geeks probably thought that Twitter would enhance their lives and guarantee their survival, but as with all human inventions, it has had unintended consequences.

In this case, perhaps for the good, because now non-geeks such as me have discovered it.

(More to come...I promise to talk about SEO and SOA in Part II. Really.)

Follow me at www.twitter.com/strukhoff