@dallasclark, I have twitterspy notify me at a separate IM account, and I keep one tab open for notifications, then have separate tabs for other accounts and conversations - in that way my usual chats don't get interrupted by tweets.

I, for one, would welcome Particls as an entirely IM based service. In that way Particls needn't limit itself to Twitter, but could emcompass other microblogging services as well (friendfeed and identi.ca comes to mind).

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. But by doing that, @particls becomes sort of a twitterspy clone (see http://dustin.github.com/twitterspy/ for details), except twitterspy lets me post to twitter.

Skip twitter for DMs, when possible, deliver via XMPP instead.