Thing 15+16 Twitter

I am a strange internet person. Its not that I'm antisocial, because I read other peoples output, I just don't often give back. I have my ancient old livejournal, which I haven't updated in about a year but I still check my flist every day. I check facebook equally often, but barely speak to anyone, and I am forever appearing offline on msn (though I frequently strike up conversations with other people anyway).

Having read my blog you can probably guess why - I am the most long-winded and stupid 'post-er' ever. I take hours to compose as much as a facebook status, and then have to think it over 15 times before posting. It makes these things tedious and irritating and so I happily nosey about other peoples lives without sharing much of my own (so - less anti-social and more sociopathic?)

I am the same with Twitter. I've had my account for a year, I've got tweetdeck at home and a twitter gadget on my igoogle page, and yet I have only ever made 120 tweets, most of which were @people, arranging things, and atleast a quarter were in the last fortnight since, thanks to 23things, the trainee twitterverse somewhat exploded!

But I do like twitter. My favourite part of facebook is status updates, so Twitter works for me on a theoretical level. That I am fussy and useless with my own updating doesn't mean that I don't read other peoples, and enjoy it as a lazy way to keep up with people. It's also great, and incredibly weird, for the whole 'looking into celeb lives'. In particular, I have recently been stalking various skins cast members to try and find out if they were brainwashed into acting the last series, or genuinely thought it was a good idea. The addictive nature of twitter has caught a lot of *figures in the public eye's* attention, and somehow it seems less weird than going through someone's facebook (where there's pictures, a lot more detail on their lives etc)

I don't follow a huge amount of celebrities though, because I genuinely don't care what Stephen Fry or Mr Pickle are eating (As a listener of Jonathon Ross' radio show, I do know who Mr Pickle is, but I always listen again or podcast, and that way - if he gets too detailed about his dogs toilet habits and every other tiny fact he reports, I can just skip ahead.) My one main requisite to follow someone is that however frequently (or infrequently) they tweet, at least 75% of it is interesting or funny (and this goes for friends aswell!)

So, as a social networking tool, twitter gets my vote; in a library situation I am not so sure. It can be used for the same effect as a facebook page, but the 140 character limit is somewhat....well limiting...because its hard to convey any *real* information in that space. You have to link to somewhere else to give the full information, and that kind of renders the idea pointless for me. I would much rather have all the information in one place, as can be done through facebook.