Inside the Twitterverse

So anyway I'm following Alistair Campbell and he was saying:
"...measles levels hitting 18 year high- there's a few editors out there who should be ashamed- and prosecuted..."
So I reply to his tweet saying:
"...absolutely- and how about those bastards at mid staffs who presided over the biggest mess in NHS history, including that Nicolson guy..."
Now. I've "replied" to the sage bag-pipe player. So I'm in conversation with him, right? Will he actually read my reply to his tweet? I thinknottle. He has, I believe, upwards of 40,000 followers, so how can any one human look at all the replies they get? You'd need a small army of secretaries devoted solely to this task. The answer then, is the idea of being able to contact celebrities via Twitter is entirely illusory. But fondly illusory. In theory it could work, we tell ourselves (especially the young folk, who apparently buy into this belief en masse.)

Then there are tweets which make no sense at all: full of arcane references, which may or ma not be learned; complex abbreviatios and acronyms which are like a code that might defeat Bletchley Park's finest. Often, like magic tricks, when a friend chooses to explain, you think: Oh. Is that all it was? Hardly worth asking really. Learning the lingua franca is a bit like learning a new language, hopefully with a steeper learning curve than, say, Welsh.

I'm enjoying trying to find ways of saying something punchy and relevant in 140 characters or less- I swear one day (maybe already?) someone will write a book or play based solely on tweets. Is that a cue for me, or you?