Tweet? More like Baa.

I like to flatter myself by thinking I am at the 'cutting edge' of the net (where ever that happens to be at the time) however, I have been remarkably slow to embrace the new craze of Twitter. But my tardiness can be ascribed to insecurity not ignorance. My problem with Twittering is almost identical to my initial reservations about blogging. Call me old fashioned and narrow minded, but I honestly believe that the vast majority of people are just too boring to be of interest to anyone but their own mothers. I do not mark myself out as an exception to this general rule - I am amazed that anyone reads this blog, but you do and in increasingly significant numbers. I fell out of my seat when I discovered that if you Googled "facts about the recession" a month or so ago, this obscure corner of the blogosphere was 5th in the search rankings.

Anyhoo... Twitter, for those who are blissfully unaware, is a condensed form of blogging - styled as an extension of the Facebook status tool. Users are invited to share what they are doing in no more than 140 characters and others can subscribe to be kept up-to-date with these incremental developments. Now the value of this concise and convenient service, often posted from a handy Blackberry or iPhone, to a news professional or politician seeking to stay engaged with interested parties is not disputed. I can also see the benefits of Twittering within small family groups, so that increasingly disparate relatives can keep in touch. However, I was concerned that as Twitter does not guard the exclusivity of the service for journalists and politicians, and is open to millions of individuals who have decided to share the minutia of their lives with anyone who will listen, the end result would be mass mediocrity. But as with the blogosphere, my cynicism has been thrown back in my Face-book conservatism and I accept defeat.

Twitter is another fantastic tool for shrinking the world, removing traditional hurdles to accessibility and extending the vast meritocracy of the web. I was certain that any glimmers of gold would be swamped and suffocated by dross (and I maintain that the vast majority of 'Tweets' are just that - projections of narcissistic self-indulgence) but, as in the case of the blogosphere and unlike gold, the golden 'Tweeters' rise to the top (with a little effort and a slight metaphorical pressure under the metaphorical elbow from a metaphorical helping hand).

So, I too have recently become a sheep grazing on Twitter's fertile field and have a select group of Tweeters who I follow. And I admit that I adore Stephen Fry's frequent frivolity just as much as the BBC and Al Jazeera updates are informative. This is not to say that Twitter is without it's controversies. I am thinking of the case, recently highlighted by a great blog (a long-time resident on my Blog Roll), of the American Senator who seriously compromised his own security, and that of his entourage, by Twittering away the details of his secret trip to Iraq - including precise travel plans and the exact moment he arrived in the Green Zone.

But then again, the world will never be free of twits.