I’ve always thought of “social networking” as a bit of a misnomer. Sitting in front of a computer screen writing 140 character messages on Twitter or commenting on a blog or tagging photos on Facebook doesn’t feel like networking to me – and honestly, it doesn’t feel very social either. Having a beer with friends and colleagues = social. Talking shop with someone I just met at a reception = networking.

Now granted, I’m a conference organizer, so “old-fashioned” meetups with people is how I believe “real” social networking takes place. So I had to laugh today when I read a blog post that had the following line:

“Twitter has been down for about an hour – how are you spending the time?”

As if Twitter was the only way to spend time and finding other things to do was a challenge! Has it really gotten that bad for some people?

If every website and email server worldwide went down for several hours during a weekday, I might actually be wondering myself how to spend that time. Picking up the phone and making a few calls would probably be the answer. But a single site?

Twitter is either brilliant or the enemy of true human interaction (and productivity, for that matter). In the meantime, for some of you it seems that Twitter is the Blue Pill.