Who are you?

So it's common knowledge that Twitter helped Obama win the election, kept us up to bang date when terrorists attacked Mumbai, has 'officially' gone mainstream (The Daily Mail {sigh} now that's a whole other blog post) and can help you find a job but over the Christmas period something else struck me.  On Twitter a person's personality really shines through, I don't just mean what they do for a living, whether they're a coding nerd or a social media guru {sigh, again} but whether they're funny, grumpy, optimistic or a doomsayer.  It's 12 months since I've been following folk on Twitter and I could sum up so many of them in one or two sentences - not about what they do, but about what they're like and I guess that's the key as to why Twitter continues to gain users and momentum.  Providing you're not just using it as a way to pimp blog posts, it's pretty hard not to show your true self - 140 chars isn't enough to pretend to be something you're not (excluding joke or fake accounts and assuming you stick at it for a several months at least), sooner or later the real you comes out.  And that's why it works - it's truly an ongoing conversation during which you get to know someone. Oh and in my experience of meeting twitterers I follow in real life, they have all been just as they are online. 

Makes you think that Twitter would be great as a dating site....