Stephen Fry is doing it. So is Phillip Schofield. Barack Obama is the biggest of all and the odds are your children take part every day. Even the Daily Echo is in on the act.

So what is it? The answer is Twitter.

Twitter is a website that enables users tell the world exactly what they are doing, thinking or feeling at any given moment, and its popularity is soaring.

It is the latest champion of what is known as social networking, which quite simply is people getting in touch online and sharing information, news and opinions instantly.

Last week Stephen Fry was stuck in a lift and let his 100,000 followers know immediately, by sending a message from his mobile phone and Jonathan Ross dropped random words into a speech during the Baftas, which some of his followers had asked him to for a joke.

Each update is limited to just 140 characters – slightly less than a text message – but it also allows you to link to photos and other websites, so you can share exactly what you are doing with the rest of the Twitterverse.

Unlike Facebook or MySpace, where you are encouraged to complete detailed profiles about who you are, Twitter simply asks for a one-line biography about yourself, your hometown and your name. You don’t have to provide it, but it makes it easier for people you may know to find you.

Your posts are visible to anyone who looks – unless you decide to make them private – and anyone who thinks you are interesting can choose to follow you so they can keep up-to-date with your messages.

Philip Schofield thrust Twitter into the forefront of the British public when he spoke about it on This Morning, prompting tens of thousands to log on and sign up for their own Twitter account.

When a plane crash landed in the Hudson River in New York, the first photograph was posted on Twitter less than a minute later.

Just this week in Southampton, an Echo reader posted photographs direct from his mobile phone of the police cordon following a shooting in the city.

Those same pictures were on the Daily Echo’s website less than 30 seconds later.

According to analysts, more than 2.2 million ‘tweets’ – the official name for messages sent on Twitter – are posted up everyday, and the amount of traffic generated by the site has increased by just under 1,000 per cent in the past 12 months.

The Daily Echo’s presence on Twitter helps people keep up with the latest news from our website, as well as making it easier for web users to get in touch with us.

If you want to find out more about Twitter and how to sign up, log on to dailyecho.co.uk/twitter