I came to Twitter comparatively late because I’ve never been a huge fan of social media. Actually, that’s not quite true. For some years I’ve been a big fan of topic oriented online forums, or blogs that welcome comments that turn into conversations, but I’ve never entirely clicked with the likes of MySpace. Why? Because I’m not big on socialising without a common theme or purpose.

So what’s different about Twitter? Well first and foremost it performs a function for me that isn’t quite what I would have called social media a few months ago. For me, it works like an aggregated new service, keeping me abreast of news and commentary from all the people – and only the people – I choose to hear from. You know how you find a great blog, hit the FeedBurner email button, receive the emails about new posts, file them, and then never have time to read them? Well Twitter works better for me. It puts all the headlines in one place, with the option to read more when I have time. And the content stream is much more approachable than with a feed reader like Google Reader because it’s all kept below the magic 140 characters.

The people I follow are mostly people relevant to my work. So, first up there are the publications relevant to my industry. That’s PR and media publications such as @prweekuknews, @FTmedianews and @mediaguardian, and SME publications like @growingbusiness, @BusinessZone and @LaunchLab. Then there are the industry commentators whose comments and blogs prove an invaluable resource for keeping on the forefront on what’s happening in PR and social media. These include @briansolis, @dbreakenridge and @Octane. Then there are the people whose tweets are simply a pleasure to read, such as @stephenfry, @glinner, @mikebreed, and so on, and so on (and so on…).

And finally there are people I know: friends, family, colleagues. But, unlike my experience of other social media such as Facebook or MySpace, they form the minority. Why? Because to me, Twitter really does seem to offer a valid platform for linking with people I don’t already know. It’s not a case of, “be my friend because I want to hit the 2,000 friends mark by April”, it’s more a case of (for me at least), “I’m interested in keeping track of the information you put out and if you want, and only if you want, you can follow what I’m doing too.” And of course, if there’s a real reason to converse, then networking happens naturally. Genius.

Yes, Twitter has a way to go before it proves it can survive long term, but with apps like FriendFilter looking to improve how connections are made by displaying additional information about followers, I think Twitter’s future continues to look promising. Let’s just hope the search for the holy grail that is monetisation doesn’t dilute the product and bring it to its knees like we’ve all seen happen in the past.