When did Twitter kill instant messaging?

A funny thing hap­pened on the way to the blog this morn­ing. I checked my email, caught up my RSS feeds in Google Reader, and scanned last night’s Twit­ter activ­ity in Tweet­Deck (which is so good it’s actu­ally worth installing Adobe Air, thanks Alli). And I real­ized I didn’t have Google Reader or Live Mes­sen­ger open. That I haven’t had them open for some time now. And that I don’t really use them any­more. Every­one I talk to on a reg­u­lar basis is on Twitter.

This may be not restricted to Twit­ter and more a func­tion of social net­works in gen­eral, but I’m far more active on Twit­ter than I am on Face­book, MySpace or LinkedIn (though I’m try­ing to grok Face­book). But I’ve noticed that since I started using Twit­ter and fol­low­ing every­one I know or am inter­ested in, my instant mes­sag­ing use has dropped through the floor and even my text mes­sage use has dropped off sharply. If I want to get someone’s atten­tion and it’s not worth an email, I’ll tweet. If it’s pri­vate, I’ll send a Twit­ter Direct Mes­sage. I’ve got twit­ter clients on all my com­put­ers, includ­ing my smart­phone (TweekDeck on desk­top and net­book, Tiny Twit­ter on the Touch Pro, though I tend to waf­fle between TT and ceTwit and Pock­eTwit), and even use the Twit­ter web site when I’m at the office behind our proxy. It’s become my pre­ferred method for light not-​in-​person (out-​person?) conversation.

Do you tweet? And if so, has it replaced IM for you?