Iquit my blog this week after four years of multiple daily posting. I didn't expect that much reaction to it (I got around 1,000 hits a day) but people were exclusively nice and pleasant about it, even though they didn't have to be. The internet gets a bad rep for being filled with narky anonymous commentators, unqualified sarcastic bitchy individuals and generally lots of mean folk. From kids squatting on message boards whipping out insults they would never even think of saying or publishing offline, to the ultra-mean tabloid dawn of Perez Hilton and D-Listed, the internet can be a very dodgy place for sensitive souls to reside.

But is that changing? The backlash against anonymity online is forcing people to fess up about who they are and what their motivations are. Why? For credibility, for honesty, and to make a stronger point. The result? Well, it's not very surprising that once an identity is revealed, nasty comments become more reserved because something said by a known author has more repercussions than something randomly blurted out my Mr or Ms Anonymous. The thing with instant interaction is that although it can cause instant aggression and criticism, it also has a happy face, with people doling out instant platitudes that they might otherwise refrain from.

Because the definition of 'friend' has been permanently altered by social networks, niceness has been democratised across the board. On Facebook, most of us now offer the same amount of time, respect, cheeriness and pleasantness towards people we don't know too well as we do to our real-life and long-term friends. Have you found yourself doling out smiley faces and little kisses (as in Xs) and general politeness to people you've probably never even hugged upon meeting in the street? Do you comment gleefully on half-strangers' photos, or leave them a nice little message on their wall? Do you ask them what they've been up to more because you can follow a newsfeed of their life in a status update? Are you being generally sound to people that, previously, you wouldn't have given that much of a thought to? Then the internet is making you nice.

There's another element at work here. Many people on the internet are those who mightn't have as strong a voice in 'real life'. Nerds! Like me! Because, generally, unless an opinion is already established offline, an online opinion needs allies and friends to work and gain popularity. And how do you get popular? Well, by being nice, of course. On occasions, this geniality slips into mutual backslapping and brown nosing, but there's a healthy dose of PR at work too. It's nice to be nice, and it's also more productive.

Then there's Twitter. Oh, Twitter. Twitter – a microblogging site where users answer the question 'What are you doing?' several times a day in 140 characters or less – has become my blogging-methadone since I kicked my blog to the virtual curb. The site has experienced a tremendous upsurge in Irish users in the past while.

The niceness element of Twitter is not just about the 'status update' element of the site, but the collective conversation that takes place. Users are encouraged to interact with each other, comment on each other's 'tweets' (posts) and generally connect in an affable manner. And they do.

Diving into Twitter is like interrupting – or, rather, joining – a friendly dinner party, where everyone is talking in short spurts about whatever hits their mind. And rather than exclude newbies (which is very Old Internet), chairs are pulled out and seat cushions patted invitingly for you to join.

The London Times this week tried to demystify the trend towards Twittering. Alain de Botton likened the site to a giant baby monitor, where people were constantly checking in with one another, determined to be connected at all times, from which media blog Gawker concluded, "We Twitter to reassure ourselves that we are alive."

And if we are that desperate to continue this oh-so-post-9/11 obsession with being heard and reconfirming our existence, then paradoxically nowhere can that be more evident, and indeed more possible, than online. The coldness, loneliness and detachment associated with sitting in front of a computer screen seems to actually be bringing people together, instead of emphasising their distances, as online culture once did.