What are some examples of when not to have a Twitter account?

Anyone trying to sell me something.

There is no reason to have a Twitter account in the first place, unless you are a delusional narcissist who thinks that every detail of your life is important, and that the admiring public that is so very interested in your daily activities is also so busy that they are incapable of phoning and asking what you are up to.

I disagree @FireMadeFlesh. That isn’t really what Twitter is about for all or even most users. I use it to access news and often before it is published in traditional media. I use it to get information from journalists who are part of the press gallery in our parliament. I use it to get links to some fabulous resources I can share with my students. I use it to connect with other writers. I don’t have Twitter on all the time, but it is a unique way of connecting in with other members of society and to get a broad view of what is happening in the world and to people who work in my field. I also watch the tweets of politicians I am interested in.

Some people might use it to tweet the minute details of their lives, but you don’t have to engage with that.

Why not to have a Twitter account? I don’t know? If you are following a very busy # it can be annoying when messages keep popping up over the corner of your computer screen?

@Mz_Lizzy Fair enough. Do you find that the news reports are less accurate though? If it isn’t being formally published, doesn’t that just lead to reporting unsubstantiated rumours? To be honest, that is the first I have heard of it being used for anything potentially useful.

When you are Charlie Sheen and on a manic high and spurting verbal diarrhea.

@FireMadeFlesh No, most journalists just link you to their new article. For example, here is one tweet in my feed today “USA Today Uncovers Widespread Evidence of K-12 Test-Score Inflation http://www.danagoldstein.net/dana_goldstein/2011/03/usa-today-uncovers-widespread-evidence-of-k-12-test-score-inflation.html"

A secondary path of information.
Some information is available on twitter well before it hits the web posts and sites.
Many companies now are on it.
One example was an issue that occured in January with comcast having a DNS issue. People could not get on the web and surf for a huge part of the US eastern seaboard. Twitter threads were posted almost immediately with workaround information.
Just one valid reason to have.
For your OP example, you only follow the things you care to know about.

When you don’t want to see the bored expression on someone’s face when sharing some insignificant detail about your life.

@FireMadeFlesh no as @MyNewtBoobs has said people provide links to traditional media sources so you are still reading information produced by professional journalists. The benefit is you can access news from all over the world. You can follow The London Times, the New York Times, you can follow NGOs and get information and data about their work wherever they are. I see it as a unique source of diverse information on pretty much anything I might be interested in.

The downside, you have to be as conscious of the likelihood of error as with any other source of information. At times someone may post something that turns out to be incorrect so you should always be verifying whether information is accurate. I follow some of the top journos in our country (and others) though plus pollies too. So, they are the same people who write the stories found in our newspapers etc.

During the recent floods here, Twiter was an amazing source of citizen journalism too. With people posting their own videos/photographs (many of which were then used by traditional journalists). It was quite fascinating to watch.