Twitter does seem to fill a particular niche. It's not going to surprise anybody when we point out that the link between footballers and their paying public is not what it was. Fifty or 60 years ago, supporters and players, even at the very top clubs, might travel to games together on the same bus. Thirty years ago, they might still live in the same community, take their kids to the same schools, drink a swift half in the same watering holes. Those days are largely gone, certainly amongst players who operate in the top divisions. Nowadays, the financial realities of the game mean that a player can clamber into his BMW, head for his nicely appointed home in a posh suburb and only occasionally come across the supporters, perhaps when heading into the local shopping centre. There's no finger pointing in that, no saying that it's right or wrong, merely an acknowledgment that life, and football, has changed.

That change comes at a particularly strange time culturally though. For at a time when the gap between players and fans is demonstrably greater than it's ever been, the appetite for bits of celebrity information, for at least the illusion of proximity to the inside line on the lifestyles of the rich and famous, gets more voracious by the day. And so we have the twitter explosion, whereby a footballer only needs to open up an account to find himself being stalked by thousands of followers.

So far, so harmless. But something else has happened in those intervening years since we lived cheek by jowl with the local centre-forward. Way back when, support for your team was almost always uncritical. You never conceded a goal that wasn't offside, if you lost a game it was because the referee had cheated you. There would be dissenting voices, there might even be a round of boos after a particularly bad game, but by and large, it was your side, right or wrong.

Decades of radio phone-ins, followed by pushing towards 20 years of internet message boards, chat rooms and blogs and you come to a very different situation where it seems as if supporters often hate their own clubs just as much, if not more than their rivals. Certainly there's no shortage of fans ready to voice their opinions very vociferously and not even the like of Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson are immune, while there doesn't seem to be a footballer in the land who isn't the target of stick from some quarter for some supposed misdemeanour.

So what we have is a situation whereby players are opening themselves up to direct contact from all kinds of fans. Same as it ever was, the vast majority are perfectly respectful, decent people who might want to ask a simple question, pass on a few good wishes or just read the words of wisdom that trip from twitter.

And then you have the rest. These are the people who seem to think that just because the player isn't standing in front of them, they can say what they like. We've seen twitter used for everything from simple comments about a player's lack of effort, phrased in the original Anglo Saxon, to some pretty nasty racist filth which, thankfully, is increasingly ending up in the courts. The supposed anonymity of a computer screen makes all too many think they're the big man who can say and do anything they want. Truly the internet, for all its benefits, is the emporium of cowardice. I have no idea why high profile people would choose to open themselves up to this, because I sure as hell wouldn't. The old saw that "sticks and stones might break my bones but names will never hurt me" is one way of dealing with it, but when you look at some of the abuse dished out, those names can be pretty wounding too.

Then you have the opposite side of the coin - a footballer's ability to understand what he should and shouldn't say on twitter. Maybe, as a "normal" person, you're on twitter. If you are, you might have 50, 60, 100 followers. Most of them you will know personally, and you'll talk to them accordingly, using that tone, maybe saying a few things that are the kind of risqué or off colour stuff that most of us have been known to spout between mates who understand where you're coming from. No harm done, no offence taken. As long as nobody else is eavesdropping on your conversation.

Footballers, as we know, adore "the banter". Dressing rooms, let it be known, are very funny places, and they are also pretty savage at times, because that banter often gets very near the knuckle, and often slightly past the elbow. Again, within that inner sanctum, who cares really as long as it doesn't descend into bullying as it has in a few cases. But take that banter onto twitter and you have to be a pretty shrewd judge of when to stay quiet, when to tweet and what to tweet. Because it's not 18 mates that are having a laugh. It's 1800 followers hanging on every word, plenty of them journalists.

Because there is a new kind of problem out there. There are a gaggle of "opinion formers" who are essentially paid to take offence and cause a media storm with it. Once upon a time, the pronouncements of sports stars were taken with a pinch of salt. For instance, in 1973, before England took on Poland in a key World Cup qualifier, Brian Clough called the Polish 'keeper a clown. If he'd done that today, there'd have been a "Top Gear" style international incident. Muhammad Ali were he tweeting in his prime, would have hardly ever got in the ring because he'd have spent all his time suspended for comments that were, yes, at times inflammatory, but mostly good natured and usually genuinely funny. The world used to just shrug at this stuff and move on. There were more important things to worry about.

In spite of the apocalyptic nature of current world events, it seems there is no longer anything more important than the 140 characters that might drip from Joey Barton's iPhone or Rio Ferdinand's Blackberry (other smartphones are available). Whatever they say to us, often in the heat of the moment, gets blown out of all proportion and, ultimately, that can only lead to one thing - players self censoring or even departing from the twitterati altogether. Both would simply increase the gap between players and supporters and would be a great shame.

So let's make a bit of a pact here. Supporters, if you must tweet in the direction of a player, don't say anything you wouldn't say to his face - and picture Nemanja Vidic while you're thinking.

Footballers, just have a moment's pause before you press tweet on every waking thought.

And all of us, most particularly the news media - don't take it so damn seriously eh? It's just a bunch of young men acting like we all acted / are acting when we were young men. Daft. It's no big deal is it?