There is one discussion that you can be sure will be taking place at any one time on any of the currently fashionable social media sites; it concerns the entire population of the world and it’s apparent inability to totally embrace this new-found techno-wonder .

Spend some time on Twitter and you will pick up the threads of countless conversations extolling the virtues of the SocMed revolution and the impact that will ensue.

Do the same on Facebook and you quickly get a feel for the amount of time that is consumed posting, poking and polling.

And once you are regularly drawn to whichever your chosen poison may be given the multitude of sites out there (I clearly favour the aforementioned) you can quickly start to formulate in your mind why the phenomenon could radically and emphatically alter how we communicate and probably more importantly, what we communicate.

Having spent almost a year now on Twitter (you will be pleased to know I took regular tea breaks and naps during that time ..) I’ve discovered a thriving community made up of various indigenous elements. There are the geeks amongst us who thrive on purely on the ‘new and shiny’ and there are those for whom it is simply a platform to promote themselves and their business. My Twitter agenda tends to vary day to day and depends very much on my mood du jour, but in essence I use it to communicate beyond my geographic limits and to seek out anything that I find useful, enlightening or interesting.

Increasingly however an air of sniggering disdain can descend when the topic arises of the “twunanointed”, or in other words, those who don’t submit to the call. Anyone who shows anything other than total and utter appreciation for the perceived benefits of social networking are derided for being narrow-minded and slow to grab ahold the reins of change.

Looking at my own parents I see two individuals who would benefit greatly from involvement with social media. As individuals with a thirst for current affairs and observational editorial they would delight in the content I stumble across on a daily basis, but Tiger Woods is more likely to win Husband of the Year before that happens.

I suppose we see it as a latter day version of opting for smoke signals over the telephone when people buy newspapers rather than log on to the Guardian’s iPhone app, and maybe those of us who have Twittered our everyday lives in the latest shade of Google can afford to feel comfortable in the knowledge that we are ahead of the game. But many don’t have the same opportunities to do the same nor are they likely to in our lifetime.

I’m not talking about America or the UK. I’m talking globally. Until we all have the same options none of us should even contemplate a sneer in the direction of anyone who doesn’t fawn with the same voracity as we do.

Social media is not for everyone for many varied reasons, enforced and otherwise. But in the short term businesses would do well to remember that non-Tweeters are also consumers and many have even a brain. They can also smell condescension and self-importance without the aid of a search engine.

Who knows? Maybe one day we may all be on the same home page.

Let’s hope it doesn’t crash.

There is one thing you can be sure binds us together when it comes to relationships …and to be clear I’m talking about all relationships here, not just the intimate ones. And that is this ..we’ve all been disappointed at some point.

That’s not to say that every relationship will let you down, but in the main there will have been a falling short of the mark that caused us to retreat, sob, lick our wounds and sob some more in the worst cases, and to shrug our shoulders in resigned acceptance in less severe instances.

When we invite people into our emotional space we attach hopes to them in terms of their behaviour and consequential outcomes, we hope, will weigh heavily in our favour. The more we like a person, the more hopes we attach. It’s like planting a garden. If it’s of critical importance to you that it blooms to perfection then you’ll tend it regularly, ply it with fertiliser, stand and wait for green shoots to appear. If on the other hand you don’t care one way or the other, you might chuck a few seeds about in homage to whatever BBC2 gardening bonanza caught your eye as you channel-hopped one evening.

Hopes, dreams, aspirations … if you hang on to them for dear life and fail to implement a qualification process that tells you whether they are realistic or not, they become one thing. Expectations.

Some where deep down we might start to conjure pictures of a happy ever-after with someone we just met or else we possibly imagine our child opening his practice in Harley Street thirty years hence as he walks into his new classroom on his first day at school. If you’re really adept at this process you will imagine these things happening before there is a “someone we just met” or before you’ve even taken a positive pregnancy test.

We like to dream, we should all live in hope (despite there sometimes being no apparent reason why that’s a good idea) and aspirations gave birth to the profession that is marketing. Expectations, however, seem to be the root of disappointments and let-downs, dashed and disregarded like insignificant pieces of flotsam and jetsam floating on the cruelly hostile sea of hope.

Now I can’t hold my hands up as a visionary on this subject for I too was practically olympic-standard at imagining the “whole roses around the cottage door” scenario when it came to fledgling relationships. And then after what seemed to be an indeterminable number of gargantuan bitter pills my friend Ullie spelt out my solution in brilliantly simple terms…

“You should never enter any relationship with expectations. They are the seeds of misery. Rid yourself of expectations and you will enjoy the relationship for what it is in real terms, not what you’re willing it to become”

Ullie was unequivocally correct.

Only yesterday I had a vivid reminder of how ignoring this advice can play out when I was targeted with a nasty little message left “anonymously” on Facebook.

Some time ago I became aware that a chap had taken a liking to me, he wasn’t my type in any way shape or form but he could be mildly amusing so we occasionally swapped banter. Every time I reaffirmed the distance between us, he seemed to ramp up his attempts to preen and parade himself in front of me like some prize-winning bull, often in front of his easily amused friends.

It became harder to feign a smile in front of Mr Jack T. Ladd, especially when he proclaimed pearls of wisdom like “You and I are so alike. We both have an air of mystery about us.” Explaining to him that it wasn’t mystery in my case, it was indifference felt like it possibly would have popped his balloon with a force he wasn’t ready for. So I chose to dodge him at every given opportunity, often very unsubtly.

My opinion on events like this is quite straightforward. If you like somebody and you throw out bait several times which they chose to ignore, then they don’t like you. Simple. And when if you’re a man throwing said bait, be in even less doubt. Continuing to puff your chest up that bit more and plunge in once again is only going to ensure that when the realisation sets in that the interest is not mutual, the catastrophe will feel so grave it should make the six o’clock news headlines.

And so Mr J T Ladd went on and on and on. And I backed off and off and off.

And then yesterday evening to my Facebook Honesty Box question “Tell me something you probably wouldn’t say to my face” I got this (anonymous) response ..

“I think you are a coward which i find disappointing. I would never have a problem saying that to your face mind you, just never got the opportunity.”

Now anyone who can’t be bothered to capitalise “I” isn’t worth a huge amount of bother anyway, but that just happens to be a bête noir of mine that I battle with constantly amidst the many grammar and spelling affectations that haunt me.

And, in case you are wondering, I knew this to be Mr Ladd … for one simple reason. He and people like him can’t just let their expectations go because they think everyone is waiting for their next promised installment, so when they sense the game is starting to run away from them they seize on that critical match-winner … the last word, preferably a nasty toxic one.

Building expectations is never advisable, particularly when you have no knowledge of the person you’re constructing them around. Which is why Ullie was spot on with her advice.

But if you really can’t help yourself donning a hard hat and erecting some scaffolding in preparation…. then learn to let them go gracefully.

Or even better … live in the moment and let the rest go hang.