What a Twit(ter)

Even with Stephen Fry's (poorly worded) declaration of love for 'Twitter' today (see BBC website) I still fail to see it's usefulness as a service.

This may of course seem rather hypocritical when written on a 'blog', but at least I can write in the full English language using more than 160 characters on here.

For me, Twitter appears to be simply a magnification of the Facebook status message. Where everyone wants everyone else to know what they're thinking or doing at any moment.

What concerns me is that we are heading towards a world where privacy (or failure to publish your every thought) will be viewed with suspicion. Failure to tell all and sundry (your 'friends') about what you're currently doing will lead them to suspect you have something to hide. And of course there will be so much 'noise' that people will shout louder (by being more outrageous) to be noticed and the situation will decline even further.

Of course I'm not the first one to have considered this, Ben Elton (as he so often does) has written a very clever and witty novel portraying just such a world (link to follow - damn you iPhone for your lack of cut-n-paste!).

(EDIT: Link as promised: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Faith-Ben-Elton/dp/0593058003)

But in an ever more virtually connected world the temptation to join in with these Web 2.0 trends is getting harder to resist.