Twitter, haiku, LeWeb,

It's only 140 characters and it came of age in Mumbai. We are, of course, talking about Twitter, my new lover. Her tweets have become my obsession. She is not so big or ubiquitous as Google, but all the cool crowd like to hang out with her. When Simon posted his poetry event Salon der Verzen it got me thinking about haiku
"Today, haiku are written in many languages, but most poets outside of Japan are concentrated in the English-speaking countries. Haiku has already had a significant influence on western poetics, but the extent to which the "haiku movement" will become integrated into existing literary canons remains to be seen.
Some of the more common practices in English are:

* Use of three (or fewer) lines of 17 or fewer syllables;
* Use of a season word (kigo);
* Use of a cut (sometimes indicated by a punctuation mark) paralleling the Japanese use of kireji, to contrast and compare, implicitly, two events, images, or situations.

While traditional Japanese haiku has focused on nature and the place of humans in it, some modern haiku poets, both in Japan and the West, consider a broader range of subject matter suitable, including urban settings, and technological contexts. While pre-modern haiku avoided certain topics such as romance, sex, and overt violence, contemporary haiku sometimes deal with such themes. The gradual loosening of traditional standards has resulted in the term "haiku" being applied to brief poems such as "mathemaku" and to visual poetry."
Twitter is the perfect medium for virtual haiku, and you can follow many of them on haikutwaiku.
Tomorrow LeWeb2008 starts in Paris, and we will be attending online. Amsterdam Blogging Workshop has the LeWeb live feed embed, with live chat so you can follow the action. All that is new on the net will be showcased there, and this year's theme will be love. So I'll be flirting with my new lover, Twitter.
Let's hope we can follow the Gaffer's advice and keep it simple!