TWITTER is a must-use tool for any journalist these days, but it doesn’t come without its downsides.

It is a gift from the gods when it comes to getting and giving information and acquiring insight and knowledge.

I use it a lot to discuss topics with people involved in local sport – mostly local cricket in my case – and it helps no end.

I have learned things I could never have hoped to learn in pre-Twitter days when all you had for communication was a phone and email.

Being able to discuss the ins and outs of issues that go on in local sport with the people involved makes for more information gained after which the correct journalistic practices can be put into practice for use in the paper.

Strangely, Twitter has become a more instant way of getting in touch with people. So many people don't answer their phones or respond to email but will fire back a Twitter direct message almost instantly.

It makes you wonder if people are ever actually not looking at their Twitter.

But it’s not all good. Twitter is an unpredictable experience largely because it is unpredictable who is reading your messages, whether they are going to reply and what they are going to say.

Mo Farah had experienced Twitter's unpredictability last week when during a question-and-answer session on it about the Great North Run he found himself facing questioning tweets about doping.

That was a good example of how you just cannot legislate for Twitter. It is random in the extreme often resulting in people you don't know with unquantifiable knowledge and unpredictable moods giving you their opinions and often demanding you satisfy their lust for attention.

To make it worse the Twittersphere, like driving, seems to bring the worst out in people.

I find it similar to road rage how people can change as soon as they tap into their account.

Normally measured people become outraged at the drop of a hat than feel the compulsion to let you know.

Even worse than the easily outraged are the keyboard warriors. Where logging on to Twitter is a Jeckyll and Hyde process for the easily outraged it is an act of war to keyboard warriors.

Psychiatrists would have a field day with these people who use Twitter purely for nasty purposes seemingly in order to boost their egos or impress their friends.

They love to take the scalp of journalists, too; to feel they have got the better of a professional at his own game gives some added kudos to their nasty Twitter existence.

Of course there are always things you can do to rid yourself of the unwanted. You can block them so you can never again read what they say and they can't read your tweets.

Or you can do my favourite thing and mute them. That way you never read what they say but they don't know it.

The thought of them wasting their time tweeting nastiness that disappears into the ether unseen by their intended victims is the perfect metaphor for their pointless Twitter existence.