My Twitter

It's not the same for any of us.  

Every single one of it uses it differently even if those differences are tiny between some of us.

No one follows precisely the same set of people that you do so no timelines are exactly the same.

I follow people that make me laugh and that engage with me.  They don't have to do both.  But it does help.  Joke.

I follow a fair number that don't follow me back.  I enjoy their tweets, I'm not fussed about the follow.  (As much as I used to be.)

Are there rules?  Not really, I'm not sure that the rules that got posted this week were anything more than a description of what twitter is for someone else.  We all, I suspect, have a different visual representation in our minds.  That's part of the joy of it.  That's why it's more than a chat room, more than an online community of internet geeks and far more than the sum of it's insubstantial and (apparently) ever fragile parts.  It constantly changes and morphs when I meet new, funny and lovely people to chat with and I have, like many of you have, made friendships that will last forever.

How do I see it?

At its best it's an actual place where I know I'll find at least some of my favourite people on the planet at more or less any time of the day.  That's not true of anywhere I know that actually exists.  I was lucky from the start and my original group (you know who you are) were a brilliant introduction to the world of Twitter, how to use it and I think we all broke all the 'rules' at least once a day in those early months.

I find myself watching new people use it not as I think they should, 'lol' 'LMAOF' 'ROFL' etc and I think, 'Jesus, who am I to judge?'  Of course Jesus stays quiet but I shall try harder to be more tolerant because as much as I enjoyed @themanwhofell's blog post and agreed with loads of it, not everyone's been on here for very long.  It takes time to get wise to Twitter and I'm pretty sure I'm not there yet.

I've seen a few people leave over the year and half since I started tweeting.  People I liked and people I was pleased to see go.  I get that it can be as lonely out there in the world of Twitter as it is in real life and like any thing that's open to the public at large a fair few bullies and idiots can spoil it for some.  But at its very best, like it will be when X-Factor starts at 8pm, Twitter still rocks my world.

And seeing as most of you reading this are on Twitter, YOU ROCK MY WORLD.  Cheers.