Last week I decided to get a Twitter account.   My “life changing” moment came at The 140 conference, where Kevin Slavin, MD of area/code, predicted that by 2012, 20% of non-video digital data transmission will originate from sensors.  And how will they communicate: most probably by tweets.  Twitter is an instantaneous, device-agnostic message broadcast system and thus perfect for mediating alerts, advice and assistance.

Just think of he house plants that tweet you when they need to be watered, ovens that give status report on the progress of your pot roast and flats that monitor energy consumption while you are on holiday.  Even the Thames tweets now to city engineers! 

And there is another awesome development on Twitter: pitching your business ideas.  Following in the footsteps of Virgin billionaire Richard Branson, who was giving budding entrepreneurs the chance to tweet their business ideas to him, now Simon Dolan, multi-millionaire founder of SJD Accountancy, is joining the club of Twitter-based angel investors.  Simon is offering entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch for investment through Twitter and earmarked £1 million to invest in small businesses that can impress him with a great idea in 140 characters or less.   Watch this space!