I decided that, on the whole, I spent quite enough time online already and didn’t need another distraction. Also despite being very interested in playing around with new internet stuff, I’m pretty cynical about much of it being viable when it comes to my work. I was initially very enthusiastic about my blog, for example, but soon found it to be more of a chore than a pleasure. If anything, I should be spending time on making my main website more attractive. More generally, I’d rather spend time actually earning money by writing articles.

Since then I’ve been pretty resistant to the idea of Twitter, mainly due to the mind-numbing inanity of many people’s tweets. But the other day I was reading your blog and saw a post about travel twitterers. And I thought to myself that you’re a pretty level-headed guy and if you are using it then perhaps there’s something to it.

I haven’t actually done any of my own tweeting yet (@john_oates, by the way), but I’m following some interesting people and will see what happens. So after all that background, all I’m really saying is: a) thanks for re-introducing me to Twitter, and b) I’ll blame you for the resulting lost hours.

But there are two bottom lines, I reckon. First, there’s simply too much stuff and too many people out there – the art of Twitter is the art of filtering out the noise… and, as more & more followers pile in, and more and more bored/irrelevant conversations start (mostly from office people who are still getting paid while tweeting – unlike me!), that gets increasingly hard to do.

Secondly, nobody trusts a journalist: we’re always outsiders. Comes with the territory. And personally, I prefer it that way!