So, perhaps I'm way off base here, and there is some actual need, but I just having a hard time seeing Twitter as something more than a luxury. I can't help but wonder how much it would be used in developing nations, honestly, but my gut feeling is 'close to none'.

Can you enlighten me as to how you feel this would benefit people?

More to the point though, I worry that something so single-purposed is far less useful than something like OLPC program, or in somehow making a greener, solar/hand-crank powered general computing device, as they would then have not only twitter, but lots of other tools.

The required time and materials to build something JUST for twitter seems excessive when that same device should easily work for Facebook, Gmail, etc?