I’m not generally a fan of The Telegraph and especially its tech section, but Shane Richmond absolutely nails it with his great piece on Twitter. His thoughts are largely summed up by the following quote:

Writing on his Telegraph blog last month, Brendan O’Neill argued that “far from being a bastion of freedom of speech, Twitter can be a remarkably conformist, elitist and intolerant arena”. It is a statement that is both self-evidently true and entirely meaningless. Twitter is a communication tool. It makes no more sense to describe it as “conformist” or “elitist” than it does to say that the telephone is conformist or elitist.

But if you’re at all into social networking and/or want to understand how and why Twitter is often misrepresented by the mainstream press, Richmond’s piece is a must-read.