I don't use Twitter or Facebook, and I don't know how they work. All I know is that people use them to waste time letting the world know "I'm going to the grocery store" or "I'm watching reruns of Hogan's Heroes". I hear frequently that they mine their users' personal info to a deep degree. Yet frequently I read about Twitter and Facebook being critical communication tools during emergencies that have cell service.
Of course the Twitter and Facebook
program initiatives (seen so often on CNN foriegn affairs news programmes) to provide a computer based insurrection tool to non Empire client states has of course recently has a little bit of blow back (CIA term I believe) with the organisation of the English riots by the sick morally corrupted underclass.
I prefer the British Security Services less well known
Friendface.