I spent this evening doing something I haven’t done for a long time: chatting on twitter. And it was awesome.

I used to do a lot more of it but, for various reasons, I’ve pulled back from twitter a bit over the last few years. I still post tweets here and there, and occasionally get into a brief tweet-reply conversation, but it’s rare these days that I’ll spend more than a few minutes at a time on the network. Tonight, however, I had multiple chats on the go with multiple people and it really reminded me of the ‘good old days’.

I was into twitter into quite a big way when it first started to get popular, and it’s no exaggeration to say that all of my friends are people I met through twitter. Without twitter I would basically not have a social life.

Sure, Twitter has its dark side, but if you manage it properly it can still be a positive experience. And that’s what tonight was: it was like having a few friends over to enjoy a glass or two of wine and chat about whatever random topics have caught our attention for the day. There was comfort in it, which is something that’s hard to come by on social media these days.