Why I am no longer a twit

I accept that you, dear reader, may have your own opinion on this, but let me say that as far as I am concerned, I am no longer a twit.

It was Ron Callari of Kid Millenium who first suggested that I sign up with Twitter. I duly did and each day posted my 140 characters worth of wisdom to a waiting cyber world. Then I linked to the tweets from a leading, respected journalist who has worked with both the BBC and CNN. My first tweet -- or rather twit -- from him informed me of the state of his boiled breakfast egg. It may have been a yolk, but he was a twit for sending it and was I a twit for reading it.

Hence I decided to twit no more.

Now Twitter suffered major problems on Thursday from hacker attacks in a coordinated campaign against online social networks. The incidents are said to have “underscored the vulnerability of fast-growing Internet social networking sites that have been heralded as powerful new political tools to counter censorship and authoritarianism”.

I accept that Twitter was a key form of communication in Iran amid the protests and clampdown that followed the country’s disputed June elections. However the majority of messages are banal beyond belief. I cannot help think that the hacker did us all a favour -- even if the twits were only silenced for a couple of hours.

As my granny used to say –- If you’ve got nothing useful to say, say nothing. That would apply to most twitters. Thankfully she never read my blogs.