So, whata'ya doing? It's one of the first questions we often ask friends and family.

Even if the answer is just mowing the lawn, or cooking dinner, it's interesting to us.

It makes us feel connected, and a part of each others lives.

Unfortunately, most of our day-to-days lives are hidden from people that care.

Of course, we have e-mail, and blogs, and phones to keep us connected

but you wouldn't send an email to a friend to tell them you're having coffee. Your friend doesn't need to know that.

but, what about people that want to know about the little things that happen in your life.

Real life happens between blog posts and emails. And now, there's a way to share.

This is, Twitter in Plain English.

Thanks to Twitter, it's possible to share short, bite-sized updates about your life

and follow the updates of people that matter to you, via the web.

Here's how it works...

Meet Carla, shes addicted to her mobile phone, reads blogs everyday and has contacts all over the world.

She heard about Twitter and was skeptical. After some of her friends couldn't stop talking about it, she gave it a try.

She signed up for free, and saw that Twitter pages look a little like blogs, with very short posts

Each page is personal and has updates from friends. She got started by looking up her friends on Twitter dot com.

After finding a few, she clicked follow, to start seeing their updates on her twitter page.

Within hours, she started to see a different side of people she chose to follow.

She didn't know that Stephen in Seattle was a baseball fan. Or that Julia in London was reading a new investment book.

The little messages from Twitter painted a picture of her Friends, Family and Co-Workers

that she'd never seen before. It was real world. Soon, she became a fan of Twitter and posted updates every day.

Her friends followed her updates, and learned that she recently discovered a passion for Van Halen.

They could see Carla's life between blog posts and e-mails. For Carla, Twitter worked because it was simple

the updates were always short, under one hundred and forty characters. Plus, she could post updates

and follow her friends using the Twitter website, software on her browser, a mobile phone, or instant messages

By asking members to answer the question, "What are you doing?"

Carla found Twitter brought her closer, to people that matter to her, 140 characters at a time.

Find out what your friends are doing, at Twitter dot com.

Im Lee LeFever, and this has been Twitter in Plain English, on the Common Craft show.

Bye!