Twitterpated

Hello there, friends. This post is going to be about Twitter and its (mis)uses, so if you’re anti-Twit, you may want to look away now.

So. I am on Twitter. I am a very, shall we say, casual Tweeter. I log on a couple of times a week, I stay for an hour or so, and then I’m off. I am aware that this is not How You Tweet Big Time and Create an Army of Followers. For me, that’s fine. I have a very limited amount of time for social networking, I can think of better ways to procrastinate (making my delighted way through the collected works of Hilary Mantel springs to mind), and – I think this is the key – I don’t have a smartphone.

My cellphone is older than my firstborn child. Put differently: it’s so old that I have to text using the number pad. Yes, I press “1″ seven times, just to get an exclamation point. So to use Twitter, I have to be sitting in front of my (only slightly less ancient) laptop. And I am not one of the gifted few who can Tweet and write fiction at the same time, so when I sit down to work, I only log on to Twitter when I’m stuck.

I do enjoy Twitter, when it’s good. I follow some fascinating and funny people. I have terrific conversations, from time to time. I’ve found a couple of new favourite blogs and news sites because of Twitter links. But when Twitter is bad, it’s like a collection of the most boring and self-regarding pub-ranters in the universe, mounted on soapboxes, braying through megaphones about their special interests. And increasingly, I find myself wondering, “What am I doing here?”

So, I’m turning to you, dear readers, for advice: how do you use Twitter? Do you love it (or at least really, really like it)? What’s the best thing you’ve found about Twitter? What one thing you avoid doing on or about Twitter? Any other words of wisdom?

Thank you!