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....
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