To tweet or not to tweet?

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I will be the first to admit I was sceptical about Twitter. I really didn't see what the fuss was about; I didn't feel the need to tweet or tell the world I was eating spaghetti bolognese for tea, after all that is what Facebook is for. I didn't see why I only needed 140 characters to be a micro blogger when there are blogs that allow me to write however much I like. My disdain for twitter wasn't because I was adversed to new fads; I had a Myspace account where I crudely hacked the code and styled it, I'm an active member of Facebook following friends who I have not seen for a decade and I hate to admit this, I believe I had a Bebo account many eons ago but the least said about that the better.

Maybe it was because Twitter was so popular, it was all anyone was talking about that I didn't want to be another sheep and follow the crowd. I didn't see why I needed to know that Stephen Fry got stuck in a lift. However, as they say, curiosity killed the cat and I eventually signed up. At first I was even more sceptical, I followed 2 or 3 celebrities and the odd friend but I still favoured Facebook. No one really “tweeted” and why everyone was fascinated about twitter was still beyond me.

However, somewhere during the last few weeks, all that has changed and Twitter has become my latest obsession. I check it in the morning, on my lunch break and in the evenings, I cannot get enough of reading my tweets. I'm following 40+ people and have tweeted over 80 times myself. But I still do not follow the masses and are following Phillip Scofield or Ashton Kutcher, in fact I think I only follow four comedians/celebrities. Instead I belong in this world of web and graphic development. Every time a new article is written, or new website is designed it seems it's been tweeted about. I follow printed magazines like Creative Review and websites like Smashing Magazine. I'm constantly being shown new techniques for jQuery and shown hundreds of fresh new designs every week that I wouldn't have seen without Twitter. I now read more articles on the web than ever and I've learnt so much over the last few weeks, I can't begin to explain. My daily intake of all things web has increased significantly.

So if you were sceptical like me, my advice is to sign up to Twitter because there's a whole community out there that can fuel a love for design like mine. Twitter is so much more than just Stephen Fry.