What is Twitter and why is it of any interest to us vegan-types? In short, Twitter is a communication and social networking tool where folks make mini-updates (max of 140 characters per message) in answer to the question: “What are you doing?”

Vegans on twitter are sending status messages about what they’re eating, thinking about and reading, as well as updating folks on when they’ve posted recipes or other articles of interest to their blogs. It’s a micro-stream of real-time information provided by vegans, and because you’re not out there googling all things vegan 24/7, you can get this info at a relatively low level of effort and time-investment.

Recently twittered: a new soup recipe, a petition to Oprah on the humane treatment of livestock (sign soon), a new vegan freak radio show, and lots of yummy food and beverage ideas.

At last count, there were about 211 twitter users with “vegan” in their profile description. Visit Twitter to sign up, if you don’t already an account, and then head to TwitDir to find like-minded vegans to follow (including me!).

If you’re already blogging and want to add the ability for your readers to instantly twit from your blog, visit TwitThis to download code snippets, bookmarklets, and/or a WordPress plugin.

[Update]: Feel free to leave your twitter id in the comments.