Maybe you follow celebrities, news sources or even President Barack Obama on Twitter, but athletes are also beginning to enter the spotlight as emerging Twitter phenomena.

Some athletes, like Tiger Woods, use Twitter in a purely self-promotional and professional way. Others, like Serena Williams and Tony Hawk, haven’t quite gone the Lindsay Lohan route to use Twitter to overshare, start feuds, deny rumors and vent in mundane updates, but they still use Twitter as somewhat of a personal platform for talking about their day-to-day lives. Hawk recently tweeted about a kegger and Williams asked her followers, “Does anyone know where I can buy one of those Booty Pops?”

Even Boston Celtics center Shaquille O’Neal (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) uses Twitter. He recently posted, “u complete me twitter, lol,” with a link to a Facebook video in which he wishes Twitter a happy fifth birthday by lip-syncing to Alphaville’s 1984 hit “Forever Young.” In the video, O’Neal explicitly states what he sees as the function of Twitter. “I use Twitter for random acts of Shaq-ness,” he said — whatever that means.

O’Neal’s tweets are harmless, and even hilarious at times, but they rarely mention the Celtics — as they perhaps should. The line between what athletes should and should not tweet about may be a fine one. For example, should Williams really tell the world, “#Ihatewhen people spit when they talk. Someone just did and it got in my eye”?

Perhaps these athletes should be censoring themselves.

Some professional athletes, however, are using personal updates on social media websites for less trivial purposes, using Twitter to advance their careers and communicate with fans. For example, New York City Ballet dancers have been using Twitter as a way to connect with audiences (and save their jobs by increasing ticket sales) during times of poor attendance.

Ballet has long been an art considered elitist, silent and reserved. But ballerinas are now tweeting, giving ballet a voice. For example, New York City Ballet dancer Kathryn Morgan (@KMorganNYC) has tweeted about injuring her foot and dealing with thyroid problems. Even though Morgan sometimes uses Twitter for the cringe-worthy purpose of venting, she’s still using the social media website to her advantage, showing that Twitter can be a humanizing way for athletes to connect with fans.

Maybe it’s not relevant (or tweet-worthy) that Lance Armstrong loved the new Foo Fighters album or that the Orlando Magic’s Dwight Howard is addicted to playing Words With Friends. But using Twitter so personally does have its advantages in terms of communicating with fans.

Howard replies to seemingly every fan who tweets at him, and the Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony recently tweeted about selling his car for charity. Sure, you may not care what Boston Celtics captain Paul Pierce (@paulpierce34) ate for breakfast, but talking about his eating habits is actually part of a larger campaign to promote youth health and fitness.

Until O’Neal decides to overwhelm us with too much information in his tweets like Lohan, or, like Ke$ha, invent his own alphabet, I’m fine with reading about his random acts of Shaq-ness and seeing him tweet at friends The Rock and “lil biebs.”