If you want to learn how to use Twitter properly you have three ways to go about it: teach yourself, get some free instructions online or pay for it. My son Tweets and he taught himself, but I had to teach him how to do it properly because he tried to teach himself. OK, he could do the basic, but who wants to be happy with the basics of something with the potential of Twitter.

You can get some free info online on how to use Twitter, but it's all very basic and you don't learn a great deal - not any more than anybody else. Me. I went the third way and never looked back. I decided to pay for it because I run a few online businesses and several websites, and wanted to know how I could promote these using Twitter without upsetting people. You can do the same.

I learned all the basic stuff that I already knew, but with a bit more besides, such as registration, how to make tweets and the like. Then I got to the stuff I really wanted to learn. Like how to get the right kind of followers for my business and how also to follow the right kind of people. None of this was difficult, and I should know because I do difficult. I write difficult stuff and help others to do difficult stuff, so when I say none of it was difficult I know what I mean.

Twitter is a wonderful medium in which you can let people know what you are up to and keep in touch with them if you want to. You can use it as a marketing medium if you wish, but most get a great deal of fun and satisfaction just by using it as a form of online SMS service. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and Twitter is there for everybody to use as they want to use it.

I even just told a joke on it: took me about a dozen tweets, but it seemed to go down great. What gets me most about great services like Twitter is these people that do nothing that advertise - every tweet is an advert with a website address on it that you must visit. OK, I do that, but only about one tweet in ten if that. And that's OK, because nobody said you can't, and I have had a lot of good information from Twitter.

Twitter is excellent social networking site, and enables people of totally different backgrounds, and with different agendas, to keep in contact with one another. The one great thing about it is that, if you don't like what the other guy is tweeting to you, then you can block them out. Simple as that! Nobody can send you messages if you don't want them to.

Personally, I don't care a great deal, but I can see how others would and I would never knowingly spam or annoy any other Tweeter because it is people like us that keep services like Tweeter going and keep the World Wide Web alive and vibrant.