Base Camp’s on again/off again affair with Twitter is on again except when it (Twitter) is off again.

Twitter’s popularity as a communications channel is soaring, so much so that Twitter’s servers can’t handle the traffic. That there hasn’t been a mass exodus of Twitter users to competing micro-blogging platforms due to Twitter’s frequent service interruptions demonstrates Twitter’s popularity and perceived potential.

So why Twitter?

People are tired of crafting long form, deep thought, ego and credibility building blog posts and have discovered that they can, usually, communicate the essence of their thoughts in the required 140 characters of less. Twitter forces you to be succinct and there is Joy therein.

Twitter is also more immediate. Blogs, RSS feeds, aggregators, etc… have made us impatient. We no longer want to know what is going on with the people and companies we respect, we want to know what is going on NOW. Twitter/Tweets provide the answers.

As well, people/companies we respect are using Twitter in cool, valuable ways: VeloNews sent/Twittered(?) race updates from the Giro and the Tour of Pennsylvania; The Piton Twittered updates from OIA/Leisure Trend’s market research conference call; SteepandCheap fans are Twittering the current deal in real time, to name a few.

Continuing to experiment in our test kitchen, Base Camp Comm has been sending press release headlines with links back to the full release. So far, the system works.

Did I mention that the linking to/from also helps build search results rankings.

Finally, Twitter is so simple that there is no shortage of professional and amateur programs trying to make it more complicated by creating all sorts of applications that make Twitter available in any format, flavor, system, platform you need. Some are even helpful and valuable.

So, if you are into it, follow Base Camp Comm on Twitter, and we’ll see where this goes.