What are you doing?

As flames began engulfing a west Santa Rosa home Tuesday, the first public reports didn't come from local media.

Instead, reports of the fire came across an increasingly popular online program called Twitter: "Lots of smoke north of Sebastopol ave. and Corporate ctr. in Santa Rosa; fire trucks en route."

That curt message was blasted across the Internet by Augie Schwer, who was walking his dog in the area when he saw the smoke.

He used his cell phone to punch out the message and post it to his Twitter Web page, which can be viewed by anyone and is automatically sent out to dozens of people who follow his posts.

Twitter (twitter.com) embodies a new form of communication that is sweeping the Internet, and is vying to become as accepted as instant messaging, e-mailing or blogging.

But unlike those other three, Twitter forces brevity. Messages can include only 140 characters.

Users call it mini-blogging -- a term used to describe Twitter and similar services such as Google's Jaiku.

Twitter gained widespread notoriety in May when the first reports of the devastating earthquake in China appeared on the service, before any major news outlets had picked up the story. One man actually used Twitter to post a message about the quake while the ground was still rumbling.

Businesses, schools and residents across Sonoma County are using the service to broadcast pint-sized messages to whoever wants to listen.

The Santa Rosa Junior College library uses Twitter to send helpful hints and updates such as "If you have to write a persuasive speech or paper, try the Opposing Viewpoints Reference Center database," and "Doyle Library: 3rd floor printer has been repaired and is now working."

Schwer's message about the fire was automatically pushed out to the Web pages, browsers or cell phones of the 76 Twitter accounts who subscribe to his posts. His mother, who lives in North Carolina, is one of those followers.

"It gives her a sense of what is going on day to day in my life," he said. "I can say it in 140 characters."

Case in point, Schwer posted last Monday: "Setting up at La Plaza park in Cotati for baby shower."

Then six hours later he posted: "Relaxing after a successful Baby Shower; so glad we're not hosting anything anytime soon; a lot of friends, a lot of kids, a lot of chaos."

In fact, Twitter derives a lot of its value from forcing people to keep messages short, said Tim O'Reilly, chief executive officer of Sebastopol-based O'Reilly Media.

To make his point, O'Reilly quoted Alexander Pope, a poet famed for constraining his words into rhymed couplets. Pope once said that funneling his creativity through such a narrow aperture made it shoot out like water from a fountain.

O'Reilly is well known for his ability to identify Internet trends before they go mainstream, and Twitter is on that list.

"This idea of public, short messages is here to stay," he said. "It is a new medium."

O'Reilly has become a prolific user of Twitter in the last few months, and has attracted more than 6,000 followers to his postings.

"Things I never would blog about because it's too much work, I'd Twitter about because it's basically just a link with a little commentary," he said.

If people are interested in the topic, they can click the link and learn more.

Lots of tools and Web sites have been developed to parse through the musings of Twitter's estimated 1.3 million users. The Web site Summize.com lets you search for keywords. The site Tweetstats.com shows how often a user posts, what common words they use, and what other users most frequently respond.

Twitter itself can be set up to notify you every time a key word is mentioned in any post using the service.

Businesses have latched onto this last feature, hoping to mine marketing data and follow their online reputation.

The cable giant Comcast -- aware that it is not always the most popular company -- began tracking Twitter posts that included the word "Comcast" in February. By April, it began actively engaging people who complain about the company on Twitter, offering to help customers or provide information about its services.

Comcast's Twitter persona is run by employee Frank Eliason, who has the username Comcastcares.

"At first, there was a small percentage of people who thought it was creepy when I'd respond to one of their postings," Eliason said. "Lots of people looked at it as a private conversation, forgetting it was a public conversation."

But Eliason, and his Comcastcares persona, has grown in popularity.

"I've seen numerous times where people tell others to contact Comcastcares," he said. "It's great that they are coming to me now."

Twitter postings can be set to private, but the vast majority are public like most blogs.

One big question is whether Twitter will retain its crown as king of mini-blogging. The site has suffered reliability issues as more people clamor to join.

But what is becoming increasingly clear is that people like the idea of mini-messages.

"Once you start using it, you get hooked," said Ryan Joseph, a Santa Rosa resident. "You can keep up with what your friends have been doing, and what they've been reading, and that's interesting. Especially in only 140 characters."

You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@pressdemocrat.com.