I am a self-proclaimed Twitter lover. It’s the first thing I read in the morning and last thing I read before going to bed (you can ask my husband). Twitter is like a bunch of fabulous little short stories that I get bits and pieces of every day, almost like a soap opera without the weird killing each other and coming back to life part. Although Twitter may have its problems – deleting tweets, FAIL WHALES and sometimes just being annoying, I’ve become reliant on my daily fix. So, I’ve compiled a few of my favorite reasons for loving Twitter – hopefully I’m not the only one:

1. Admit it, you love knowing what other people are doing. This makes “people-watching” so much easier because you can do it from the comfort of your own home (or phone). I love to just sit, people watch and create storylines for the people I see. Twitter lets you take it to the next level by giving you bits and pieces of their lives – kind of like an extended-version Mad Lib!

2. You don’t have to watch the news anymore. By following a select group of news outlets and people who care about current events, I can usually find out the major events of the day without racing home to see the six o’clock news. Sometimes you may even find out about major events before the news outlets have had a chance to formally construct a story. By following those in the know, you’ll always be informed.

3. If you’re having a bad day, Twitter can make it better. I have two theories on this-if you’re feeling low there is bound to be somebody’s tweet that will make you chuckle or someone will tweet about why their day is rotten and you can commiserate or realize that maybe your day is really ok. I personally love to find things that make me laugh – personal favorite being @someecards (always hilarious and usually related to a current event!). Follow them, you won’t be disappointed.

4. Twitter can help you find motivation. Being a runner, I sometimes find myself lacking the motivation to get my rear out the door and get it done. Twitter can be a great motivator – being the runner that I am, I naturally follow a large number of athletes. This being said, it seems that someone else has always run longer, biked harder or swam a thousand laps more than you thus making you feel like cranking out those four miles might not be so rough after all. I’ve also discovered that if you tweet about procrastinating said run, someone will inevitably help you along by encouraging you to get your rear out the door and get it done. Chances are, they’re probably one of the people that just ran 100 miles or biked across the state. But hey, at least they’re nice!

5. Twitter has the ability to make you care about things your never knew you would care about. Case and point: Lebron James and the World Cup. Now, I love a good basketball game and I realize that soccer seems to be the world’s sport. But if it weren’t for Twitter, I wouldn’t know that ESPN devoted an entire hour of coverage to learning the city Lebron was going to choose for his next season or that the vuvuzela is apparently the most annoying noisemaker out there. Because I follow people that care (or at least tweet) about topics such as these, I can easily feel like one of the masses (even if I don’t care-sssh don’t tell anyone!).

Now that I’ve shared my love for Twitter, what makes you a Twitter lover?