"I Taw a Putty Tat", Tweedy Bird (1947)...

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables users to send and read messages known as tweets.

OK, so I joined the technology revolution and created a Twitter account to see what the hype is all about.  But, I'm convinced that I must be missing something and now I rather feel like wanting to slap that little tweety bird off its stick or feed it to Sylvester.

Tweets are text-based posts and you can only write 140 words per Tweet, and for somebody like me, that is proving to be difficult.  I'm the type of person that spells out every word in my text (SMS) message, to make sure people can read it properly.  If I receive a text (SMS) from a mate, with abbreviated words such as m8, then it'll take me some time to decifer the message - much to the frustration of my nephew.  I know that makes me sound old, but why can't people just spell the words?  No wonder so many younger people can spell anymore.  "Damn you, you mobile technology unit thingy!"

When following a person on Twitter, you get ALL their tweets, and this can indeed be very annoying - mainly because people you follow are most likely active tweeters and posts hundreds of tweets on a daily basis!

If you search a topic, then the same mayheim applies.  You are presented with a bulletin board that's alive and constantly updating.  By the time you see a comment and want to reply to it, it has been replaced by 243 other tweets.

For me it seems to be a way of getting attention and shortlived fame, with the short in your face lines of abriviated text that only a certain text (SMS) fanatic society understands.  Even the interface of Twitter is poor and how the hell do you expect to find anybody to "follow", when there are millions of Twitter users out there.  As an example, I searched for Drogba (Chelsea striker), but how do you know which one is the real Drogba?  You might wonder why the hell I would even "follow" Drogba, but that's not the point here.  Even the "RealDrogba" doesn't use Twitter, so why even sign up to Twitter.

Furthermore, I don't understand why some famous people want to share private aspects of their life with the Twitter community, stuff that you would only share with close friends.  Celebrities couldn't be that shallow, could they?  Ahsley Cole (another Chelsea player) is according to his Tweets, sharing very personal lines about his relationship with his wife "Cheryl just beat me up verbally. Ouch."

Demi Moore and Aston Kutcher are a couple that clearly is craving attention; her career more or less stopped after the movie Ghost and Aston makes the odd comedy B movie or Punk'd on MTV.  Personally, I don't rate either of them highly.  So, to get attention, which they actually manage to get on the news, they share their personal life details on Twitter, e.g. talking about what they've done to Demi's butt.  But (ha ha ha) does that give them more money or additional parts in movies - no.

I do understand that for countries that have Twitter enabled on their mobile networks, tweeting on the go, they can communicate with the World easily and realtime.  Latest example is Iran.  People were able to send pictures and news flash from within the country, to the frustration of the Iranian state.  Even Twitter postponed scheduled maintenance to keep people in Iran on the air.

Normal people, with no journlistic background, can be heard and share their comments on news sites, like Sky News, and thereby share realtime news stories.  That's probably the best part of Twitter.

I'm failing to see how Twitter can be used by companies, but that's probably just my narrowminded point of view.

So, what the hell is the point with twitter?

• Is it useful? Yes, for some.  You either tweet or you don't - hate or like.
• Is it a waste of time?  Absolutely, but so is Facebook and writing blogs
• Is it not a waste of time? Yes, some people use Twitter as a media to communicate and debate
• Why use it then?  Your choice, it's a real-time chat room

You will never know if the a person is real or not, but does that matter when having a discussion about Snow Leopard (latest Mac OS release), with fellow tweeters?  Probably not, as long as you have a sensible discussion and take every tweet with a pitch of salt.  If you are gullible enough to follow a celebrity, then don't trust what they write blindly, as there's a high possibility that it is in fact not the celebrity.

Your choice to tweet or not, I've decided not to.  Like any other technology or social web sites, it has been designed to communicate with people around the World and share information.