No doubt Twitter was the story of the week. In fact, given the character limits on Twitter messages, there were probably more words written about Twitter on then Internet this week than there were words written in Twitter messages–from raves about Twittermap, a mash up of Twitter and Google Maps–to a big media wrap up in the Wall Street Journal. Several prominent blogs followed Techmeme’s lead and set up Twitter channels. Others offered personal tales of everything from Twitter addiction to Twitter revulsion (and revulsion, and revulsion).

There’s plenty of Twitter advice out there.

Several bloggers have followed Techmeme’s lead and launched Twitter editions.

And borrowing data from Heather Hopkins at Hitwise, Matthew Hurst compared Twitter usage in the US and UK, looking at Twitter growth over the past week, and wondering what everyone else is wondering: Has Twitter mania has peaked?

God, I hope so.

It would be foolish for anyone to dismiss disdainfully any application that can create so much excitement so quickly. The history of the Internet is a history of seemingly simple tools of dubious usefulness becoming indispensable parts of everyday life.

But mania is as mania does and the headlong rush to twitter about Twitter smacks of nothing so much as “irrational exuberance.”

Still, whether or not Twitter itself is the solution of doom, the Twitter eruption of 2007 has exposed the enormous latent demand for low-cost, everywhere messaging that effortlessly crosses platforms and unites messaging channels.

Today cross-platform, everywhere messaging is ubiquitous in the enterprise. (The Blackberry is to enterprise messaging what the iPod is to consumer music.) But for consumers in the US that kind of ubiquity has remained out of reach. The cost of data service plans offered by wireless carriers (circa $70 a month) is prohibitively expensive, limiting smart phone penetration. And the inability to integrate SMS, e-mail, IM and the Web without custom software means cross-platform, everywhere messaging is today a dweeb-only affair.

Twitter is hardly a perfect application. Most of all the signal to noise ratio is low. And how Twitter plans to monetize the service is anyone’s guess. But one can imagine a Twitter-like service with greater user control–customizable message rules for user defined friend groups, for example, or methods for streaming music or swapping pictures, or means for schools to notify parents about snow days–becoming indispensable not only for geeks at SXSW but also for soccer moms at Starbucks.

Now that would be something to twitter about.