From where I’m standing, Twitter is increasingly becoming a means of communication for many creative professionals in doing different things throughout the day - ranging from updating contacts with what they’re doing, direct messaging friends with quick messages instead of an email, and sending/receiving links to newly posted media on the web.

I’ve been mulling over this growing trend for the past few months, and kept an observant eye on not only how I’m using Twitter, but how my contacts are utilizing the service.

What I’ve found is that Twitter has become a tool for doing much more than just updating your friends with what you’ve up to, it’s also a great way to keep in contact with them using the direct message feature. Twitter is increasingly becoming more of an essential relationship and communication tool.

I pulled this following two paragraph quote from a weblog post entitled “Why Twitter Matters.”

By following people on Twitter and other microblogging platforms like Facebook, I’ve gotten to know people at a much deeper level than if I was just to read someone’s blog or socialize at a conference.

Short updates allow me to know a person’s favorite sports teams, restaurants, weekend activities, family adventures and the like. And by weaving together the pieces of someone’s life in this manner, I’m able to know them on a much deeper level. It’s actually quite rewarding on many humanistic levels.

From my point of view, this statement is very accurate. Most of the messages contacts post to Twitter are personal to a certain state, things that help you understand, and get to know a person better. People post thoughts which wouldn’t otherwise be published on their weblog or regular technology column. For instance, if I wasn’t following John Gruber on Twitter, I wouldn’t know that he “fell down the stairs 15 minutes ago”, or that his favorite Super Bowl commercial was the Audi’s R8 “Godfather”.

When I need to get a quick message across to someone and they’re on my Twitter contact list, I fire off a message to them via the Twitter website or via Twitterrific. While it restricts my messages to 140 characters, this essentially helps me stay blunt, simple, and to the point with my wording. Most of my personal correspondence with personal contacts is now routed through Twitter, not email as it was for most of the 2007 calendar year.

I’ve found I’m now corresponding with a lot more people than I was in the past, down to the fact that it’s more simple than clicking on Mail, creating a new message, entering an address, subject line, email, and clicking the send now button - and vice verca on the receptiants end.

While Twitter as a service is still new and developing, utilizing Twitter in the online life of a creative professional is well underway.