I’m on the blogosphere, I’m on the Facebook, I’m on the Blackberry and now I’m on the Twitter. The Twitter website was established all the way back in 2006, but in recent weeks the Twitterers have come home to roost, along with all the associated awful puns and weak metaphors.

The “deal” with Twitter, for any middle-aged readers who might wish to engage with one of the “young people” we hear so much about, is that it provides a forum in which you can post your least important thoughts, 140 characters at a time. Sceptics will say that Twitter is basically identical to Facebook, but with all the features removed except for the status updates. Instead of online friends whom you’ve never met, you now get ‘followers’.

The concept of followers is interesting; they are not stalkers, but it certainly makes any would-be stalker’s life a lot easier. Find your celebrity of choice, hopefully one that really wants to “engage with the youth” (politicians are probably best for this), follow them on Twitter, and then follow them in real life. If the terrorists get hold of Twitter, the west is doomed.

The reverse is also true, for all the furore over Britain becoming a Big Brother state, people seem to be more than willing to give up their personal information on Facebook. The police no longer need to invest millions in security cameras and CCTV; they just need to get a Twitter account. Fortunately for the libertarians, the only people anywhere near the British government who come close to understanding Twitter are Alastair Campbell and John Prescott, who like to advertise their own blogs rather than tell us when they’re making a cup of tea. Twitter seems perfectly suited for ‘proper news’ items, like when it snowed in Bath earlier this year and the University told us that lectures we cancelled. However, the meaning of news is notoriously flexible.

During President Obama’s State of the Union Address, it was revealed that Members of Congress were tweeting or twittering throughout with important information like “the best seats are reserved for the Senators”. A small number of MPs have tweeted in the middle of Prime Minister’s Questions. Surely, if someone is busy typing on their Smartphone while they are supposed to be listening to something, it means they are not paying attention, and advertising that very fact.

So Twitter has become very popular in media and political circles grasping for any sort of relevance. The problem is not that their ideas and thoughts are too complex, but that they jump on any sort of gimmick that lessens the credibility of institutions in desperate need of authority. Through descending to shorter and more inane chatter, they have confused new with good.   

I’ve often said that the process of blogging is like talking to an empty room. By comparison, Twitter can only be described as talking to a very crowded room, with everyone else talking at the same time, frantic to make their own voices heard.