Back in December my company, Logarithmic IMPACT, did a little fortune telling with our "Top 10 Marketing Predictions for 2011," looking at some trends we believe will take hold this and in coming years.

One of our picks was a trendy new thing called called a 2d-barcode, which is really not new at all since barcodes revolutionized product manufacturing, distribution and package tracking and have been around for years in places like Japan.

I don't know if I've just become more aware of them of late, but in the first few months of 2011 it seems like their use has exploded beyond anything I saw last year. Certainly magazine advertisers are picking up on the power of the barcode to connect the print and online worlds -- it's a logical fit and lends some real numbers to the generally squishy measurability of print advertising.

Dear friends, I opened my emails this morning to find a distressing message from Twitter:



Of course I do not believe my account was hacked in any way and have not seen any suspicious Tweets posted in my name, but regardless since just after midnight last night and throughout today my account at @JosephMann has been in a state of suspended animation.

I won't bore you with the gory details of how much time I've spent trying fruitlessly to get any kind of resolution from Twitter -- I'm sure plenty of people out there have had to deal with the same issues. Reflecting on this -- still ongoing -- experience I suddenly realized how dependent I've become on Twitter for my business (and occasionally personal) information. From a sense of apathy bordering on abandonment nearly 3 years ago when I first tried it, Twitter has become an indispensable feed of business information and conversation from and with like-minded professionals.

It is with a strange mixture of loss, anger, fear, resentment and some confusion that I've stumbled through this Twitter-less day. You might be tempted to say I'm addicted to it, but that's not quite it. In fact, when my account was working, although I regularly posted I usually only popped on 2-3 times per day to read, reply and post. I sometimes skipped a day or two of logging in without a second thought and I never checked it on the weekends.

So what's going on here? Maybe it's a sign of how far Twitter has come as a business tool, insinuating itself into the daily routine (for some anyway). And though it's still got a long way to go (hello? is my account working again yet?), I can't imagine how I would easily replace it with some other form of interactive, information-gathering communication. Google Wave? Interesting -- promising even -- but still a long way to go. My blog is whispering seditiously in my ear that I should update it more often instead.

Here's hoping I won't have to learn to be without Twitter for long!