The recent riots have brought about a dubious use of Twitter and other social networking sites such as Twitter.
It isn't the first time this has happened. People are encouraged not to give their locations and holiday details away on the sites for fear that burglars may strike while they are away.
Facebook has been known to reunite people with old flames and break up marriages.
There is no doubt that sites such as these can be used by people for the wrong reason - although if they were banned from using them, there are so many other ways of getting touch with people these days - unlike the days when I was a teenager - we didn't have a phone, so I had to give my friends my next door neighbours phone number and they would run round and get me to speak to them! Even then it wasn't simple - they had a party line - hmmm party- lines - surely this must have been the first case of phone hacking - you could hear whole conversations without anyone realising they were going on!
However, in spite of the downsides - I do love Twitter. I like Facebook - except for the old photos of me that my uncle put on, wearing big red knickers and an awful dress when I was about 12 - oh and of course the dreadful photos of my curly perm in the eighties that I have been tagged in!
But Twitter is my favourite - so in this post, I will attempt to describe to you why I LOVE Twitter!
Not that I understood it much when I first started it - I had heard about it briefly and as I run a website and am a fan of all things computer, I decided to create and account.
It was July a couple of years ago - Twitter was in full swing - but not populated as it is now - so getting to talk to people and being able to follow what was going on was relatively simple - unlike now when sometimes Tweetdeck moves so fast you click to reply to someone and their profile has moved so fast
you have got the wrong person completeley - which can be embarrassing depending on the kind of conversation you are having!
I remember my first famous person tweet it was - Vernon Kay - I was SO excited. I rang my friend, texted everyone I knew retweeted it about 25 times - sad I know, but in the beginning that was the fun I got from Twitter!
Vernon tweeted a few times - but never did the magical follow until much later. My first famous follower was Duncan Bannatyne.
I often have a bit of banter with Duncan - one of my favourite conversations was about twelve months ago when it was my friends fortieth birthday - I was having difficulty with the menu, so first he was advising me on what to eat. Then he was advising me what to wear - along with many other tweeps - I dont think I have ever had so many people advising me on what to wear - very funny!
And earlier this year I joked with him that whichever end of the country I was - he made sure he was the opposite! It seemed that whenever I was going to London, he got a car out of the capital as quickly as possible! This had happened so many times it became a standing joke over several months. But in February , my friend and I met him for a coffee in Covent Garden - always weird at first meeting face to face but a bit of fun and something I wouldn't normally have done - after all - with Dragon's Den in full swing there are people who would give anything to spend half an hour with Duncan Bannatyne!
I have also made great Twitter friends with Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford to the point that he invited me and my son to the This Morning studios and we spent the day there. At the end of filming my son Joe did a video interview with him and Ruth which is on youtube and a lovely piece. They have both done pieces for the website and the girls from Sky - Jackquie and Charlotte also count amongst
my favourite Tweet Friends and we hope to to visit them very soon.
One of my most exciting tweet backs which I wont give up on is Jonathon Ross - who promised to write for us for a tin of chocolate biscuits - I have it in writing and I wont give up until I get that piece! I have been pestering him for six months and although he keeps delaying - he does keep promising it - watch this space!
Twitter helps me immensely with content for the website. Emma Freud and Emma Kennedy have written a piece for me but our website is about real women with real lives and so we dont just ask famous people.
We have published articles from many of our followers from subjects such as life as a stepmum, a woman who wishes to remain childfree and a stay at home Dad - to articles about DIY Sex and how to de-clutter!
It's a hugely important tool for people like me -at the end of the day my friend Angie and I who run the website- are just two working Mums running it from laptops in our living rooms.
Twitter enables us to get close to people we would never have chance to in the traditional way - where else would you meet the Corporate Communications Director of Asda and the Head of PR for a
huge dating agency all in one day.
I do understand concerns about text speak and about people being addicted to it - there is no doubt that it can become addictive. There is no need to watch the news or a television series again because Twitter will always tell you what is happening and who has left the latest reality TV show.
During the recent riots, it was a constant source of information - my timeline is full of people whose tweets I trust and I didn't notice any rumour-mongering amongst it - it enabled me to keep up with the current news as it happened.
I log on before I go to work every morning - I catch the news headlines and find out if anything important has happened overnight.
It keeps me company when my husband is working away - or if I face a wait at a train station - or a long journey on my own.
It does a lot of good - charities are able to let people know what fundraising events are happening and what they can do to help ; Twitrelief raised millions as people auctioned amazing experiences on ebay.
Im sure there will always be the sceptics who rip it apart - and as it grows it is getting harder and harder to get close to the people you want to be close to.
I think I joined it just at the right time - and I had made lots of my contacts before it went really crazy on there.
I dont just use it for contacts though - I do have fun on there. It might sound funny that you can get to know someone in 140 characters but you can. I have met some lovely people on Twitter and I would love one day to meet up with some more of them.
I dont think that makes me sad - it doesnt stop me from having conversations with or meeting up with my friends - but it is something I enjoy as well as it being very useful to me and opens my world to all kinds of people that I may never have had a conversation of any kind with... and what on earth is wrong with that!