Today, Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, wrote on the blog today that IM support, which has been gone for months now, won’t be back any time soon. That’s going to disappoint plenty of people, but it’s not such a bad thing. First of all, it’s been gone for months already, second of all, what good is IM support if the system itself is shaky? Twitter went through some really rough growth spurts earlier this year, with many people threatening to leave for good because of spotty connection and the seemingly omnipresent fail whale. They’ve gotten better. Not perfect, but much much better. It would really be a shame to lose that for IM support.

But more importantly, Williams’ entry makes Twitter more transparent. Web 2.0 and social media are supposed to be about transparency and connecting with users, after all, and saying you’re going to do something you have no intention of actually doing is a great way to alienate your user base.

It’s dangerous to not give your users what they want, but it’s much more dangerous to lie to them.

My feed went crazy for the past two weeks, with people sending out near-real-time reaction tweets to both political conventions. If you’re a political reporter and aren’t following those kind of people, you’re missing out on a real wealth of sources.

And even for local issues, it’s a great way to get reaction to big happenings. Simply ask a question to your local followers and they respond. You can gauge if the issue matters or not, and if it does, you can try to turn those followers into sources.

Don’t know where to find local people to follow? Try Twellow, a search engine that compiles where people are from.

Twitter is constantly evolving. How are you using it differently now than you were six months ago?

CNN has a twitter feed already, and it’s used to deliver breaking news. A pretty obvious use for it, actually. After all, if you can’t explain your story in 140 characters, then there’s something wrong. And since it’s real-time, it shows up on your phone or your screen more quickly than you might get an email. But there are other uses, too.

If you can find people who use Twitter, not only do you have a ready-made tip line, you can also make sure that you’re actually writing about the things the people in your community care about. Following people in the community makes sure that you know what they’re talking about.

One blogger, Michael Arrington at Techcrunch, had problems with his Comcast internet service. He vented his frustration on Twitter, other bloggers picked it up, and he got service restored. In his post explaining all that, he talked about Twitter as an early-warning system for companies. It can easily be an early warning system for newspapers, too.

Is there something big happening? People are talking about it, and we need to find out where. That way we can make sure their voices get included, makning sure the stories we’re righting are accurate and that they resonate with people.

But it’s also a way to start a conversation with the community. If a reporter uses it, they can let people know what they’re doing and also talk about the stories. News isn’t a one-way street anymore, and the more ways we can make readers part of the conversation, the better off we’ll be.

Finally, it’s a way for reporters and editors to keep in touch. Reporters can tweet to keep their editors (and others who follow them) up-to-date when on assignment, including when a meeting goes long, or something interesting happens that might change how the story is played. A text message might do the same thing, of course, but this has the added advantage of making our operations even more transparent, a good thing.

So do any reporters out there use Twitter in their job?

I don’t want to get rickroll’d, and if I’m following a link at work, I’d really like to know where it’s taking me. So here’s my million-dollar idea: develop a service that shortens a URL, but still brings up the original URL in your browser’s status bar. I know, I know, it’s called a link, but you can’t do that on Twitter. To be fair, Tinyurl does offer a preview link, but there are a few problems. One, the link submitter has to use it, which most don’t; and two, it makes the url longer, which is contrary to the point of tinyurl, isn’t it?

Since I’m a wealthy member of the media elite, I release this idea onto the Internet. Unless someone figures out how to make money off of it, in which case I want a cut.