In the Guardian, Henry Porter considers the allure of twitterers.
Twitter is not alien or new to humanity. It is part of us and shaped by the extrovert side of human nature. Spend time in a room of strangers and it is easy to spot the tweeters, not simply because of the phone in their hands, but they are usually extroverts or have something to sell. A game for an idle moment is to choose natural tweeters from history. Dickens, yes; Austen, no; Sir Joseph Banks, yes; Darwin, no; John Wilkes, yes; Dr Johnson, no; Disraeli, yes Gladstone, no. Shelley, yes; Keats, no. You may disagree with my take, but you see the point: not every personality is naturally drawn to the marketplace.