Have you signed up for Twitter? You should.  Twitter is more than a fad and should be in your online Toolkit.

Sharing on Twitter is a different culture, and a change in the way we typically operate on the Internet.  Hiding your tweets (messages) goes against the very purpose of Twitter.

The best way to illustrate this point is to compare Twitter to Facebook.  With recent changes to Facebook’s layout and functionality it’s got a very Twitter-like feel to it.  For this article we’ll put aside Facebook’s strategic moves toward Twitter and focus on how they were both first intended.

Facebook is private. Your photos, your status, and your profile itself is private by default.  The only people that can read what you right in your personal space are those that you have specifically given the privilege to.  Facebook calls this ‘friending’ because you officially confirm someone as a Friend.  You can give varying levels of permission to different levels of friends, but the idea of privacy among your circle of friends keeps it a closed environment.  This naturally serves a great purpose, you can share parts of your life with your parents, old roomate from college, and your friends without having to worry if someone is reading what they shouldn’t.

Twitter is not private. Calling it private/not private seems to put a negative connotation on Twitter.  You could also think of it as open and closed.  Twitter is designed to be open.  While Facebook has other bells and wistles, the concept of Twitter revolves around you tweeting what you’re doing/reading/thinking/learning/etc.  If everyone was private, it wouldn’t work- it’d be the equivalent of Facebook’s status updates.  The difference with Twitter is the idea of Following people you want to- whether you know them personally or not.  From political figures to game changing CEOs, you are able to follow them, learn from them.  Additionally, if you want to follow (keep up with) a celebrity from Hollywood (oh boy!), you’re certainly welcome.

One of the biggest reasons people stop using Twitter is because no one is following them. This could be for a variety of reasons, and I discuss the best way to use Twitter in another post.  But if you’ve set your Privacy on Twitter to block everyone, you’ve basically decided to make Twitter a one way street.  And you’re welcome to do that as long as you keep in mind that it’s one of the reasons people drop off the Twittersphere.

But people can read my thoughts and whatever I type!  Yes they can!  So don’t type anything you wouldn’t say to a room full of people using a microphone!