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One of the interesting things about Twitter is looking how famous people choose to use it. Take someone like Steve Martin, who I follow: it's all sorts of comic gems, nothing private, nothing personal - all jokes. Other celebrities are overtly personal - like Charlie Sheen. I do a mix of observations and updates.

I have 1.4 million followers on Twitter. I get very interesting, sometimes very diverse input from my followers. So it's sort of like this water cooler, digital water cooler, if you want to think about it, where you go and you listen to conversations that are happening that perhaps will shape your thinking.

People on Twitter can follow tech if they're interested in tech, or business if they're interested in business, or they can follow celebrities that they're fans of.

I'm less interested in how people are following each other and more interested in how they are following topics and tweets themselves. People are following more key words and concepts and more ideas and acting on those rather than individuals or organizations.

On the one hand Twitter gives you the opportunity to engage with people, which is great, but on the other there are people who feel they can say whatever they want, put poison out there, really, without fear of any repercussions.

Every day, I wake up and I say, 'Why... how... did I end up with 1.7 million Twitter followers?' It's freaky to me, every day, but that tells me that there's an appetite out there that had previously been underserved. There's an inner geek in us all, an inner bit of curiosity that people are discovering, and they like it.

I know very little about the viral, electronic world, but I use Twitter to communicate not only information that I think some of the fans want to hear about but also ideas.

I don't want to be one of those people that's constantly promoting myself on Twitter. I think the fun thing about Twitter is being able to share all the little random things that happen in my life.

Social media has allowed fans and celebrities to really engage and have an organic interaction with each other. Ever since I've had the opportunity to use social media, all the way back to the days of chat rooms, I found I was able to really understand what the fans wanted, communicate with them, and share my lifestyle.

Personally, I don't have a Twitter account. I like to be in control of the way the stand up of Stewart Lee is perceived, I don't want to have to engage with individual people. Also, when I do look at it, loads of factually inaccurate things about me are written.