General twittering

This week, I will mostly be trying to get my head round the capabilities of Twitter... and the jury is not quite delivering the strongly negative reaction I've given it in the past, but there's a nagging little voice that won't stop badgering me about the issue of identity and social networking tools...

There seems to be an inherent inflexibility in all of these forms of social networking that they're unable to cope with the niches we create in our own lives.  Twitter becomes a little like doing a loud stage whisper about something you're up to - letting those people you want to know, know... and letting those people you actually don't want to know, know too!  It's all or nothing.  There's no grouping in these things which adequately accommodates the complexity of our messy relationships.

Is everyone destined to become a bland, middle-of-the-road version of themselves for fear of offending someone / some future useful contact / future employer / a.n.other?!  Is that where life in the connected world is taking us?  I can think of several really useful functions for lots of different web2.0 tools... but... I wonder if in our rush to explore and use these tools during the early days, that we're not risking missing some important functions because they don't yet allow us the subtlety we need?