There is something about seeing what people who I don't know, get up to on a day to day basis. It fascinates me. Social networking as a whole suits me, some people despise it and think it's the start of a downfall into a world of loneliness and misery.
Fortunately if you're reading this, you're probably on Facebook and/or Twitter, so you will understand where I am coming from.
When you tell someone that you on Twitter, the usual reaction from them, is that you either have no life, or that you spend all of it telling strangers what you had for breakfast and how big your poo was. What a lot of people don't realise, is that there are 1000s of funny, interesting, witty, friendly people on there. I follow some very witty and interesting people and reading their tweets are a highlight of my day.
The thing is, I have a life. I go to work 39 hours a week. I spend time with my flat mates (@sazdaz9 and @JessieNic85). I go out a fair bit and socialise. It takes less than 10-15 seconds to write a tweet, this hardly takes time out of your day.
I'm quite pleased that the sort of people who scoff at the thought of Twitter, don't go on it. Because they are the sort of people who will end up being uninteresting. I urge someone who is sceptical, to have a look at some tweets. Yes there are people out there who do nothing but tell people what they are doing at the exact moment, but you need to look harder.
I often get asked what I would do if Twitter vanished. My answer is that I would continue with my life. I would probably go to bed at a more reasonable hour, rather than 3-4am. But I would miss the freedom of speech that Twitter gives you. Now and again I become a bit disenchanted with the whole thing, but that doesn't last long.
I have learnt to be a bit more careful about what I say on there. I tweeted about Amy Winehouse's death, with the following.
"It's sad when anyone dies, but I find it hard to respect a drug addict. No matter how talented they were"This tweet was met with a lot of abuse, but also a lot of people agreeing with me. My phone was going nuts with the amount of notifications I was getting. A lot of people take things out of context when they read them. The majority of the people who gave me abuse, didn't follow me and don't know my sense of humour.
I also tweeted about the iPhone alarm not going off on 1st January 2011. There was a big thing in the press about it and my tweet ended up on both The Daily Mail's and Sky New's website. (Daily Mail and Sky News).
This kind of freaked me out. Realising that anyone in the world could be reading my tweets. Fortunately, I don't say anything too controversial. But it did make me think and I am more careful about what I tweet.
So yeah, my advice to anyone is the following...
Spend enough time on there, follow the right people and you will see a different side to the world. You will see people who are enjoying life. People who are fighting for what they believe in. Most of all, you will find people whose tweets make you smile. Make you feel that the world isn't so bad after all.
Just try it.
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