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PRESIDENT'S LOG:QUESTION: WHAT do I have in common with Barack Obama, Madonna, Sarah Brown (Gordon Brown’s wife), the entire Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour Parties, Stephen Fry, and 14 people who claim to be the pope? Answer: we’re all on Twitter. Maybe you’re reading this and you still don’t know what Twitter really is; and by now, because just everyone is talking about it, you’re embarrassed to admit that. Fear not, I’m here to help, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

Twitter describes itself as a “real-time short messaging service”. It is sometimes described as a “micro-blogging” site. Put simply, it allows you to register, and then to broadcast to the world short SMS-length messages on anything you like, from what you are doing right now to your deepest thoughts (provided you can summarise these in 140 characters of text). So, for example, right now President Obama is counting the calls coming in to him supporting his healthcare reforms (315,023 so far), while one of the 14 Popes has just been eating black pudding-flavour crisps.