London, July 25: Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand has vowed to continue tweeting despite being contacted by the Football Association (FA) to explain his tweet about Chelsea defender Ashley Cole.

The FA has yet to announce whether Ferdinand faces action for responding to a tweet from a follower who described Cole as a `choc ice' in the wake of his evidence as a witness in the court case involving John Terry and Ferdinand's brother, Anton.

However, an unperturbed Ferdinand said only thick skinned people can survive on Twitter, and added abuse from rival fans spurs him to perform much better during their respective teams.

"Anyone who says they're thinking of going on Twitter, I always say `You've got to have a thick skin'," The Telegraph quoted Ferdinand, as saying.

"You've got to be able to take abuse. If you can't take abuse, then it's not the place for you to be on there. You have Liverpool fans, Manchester City fans, obviously now

Chelsea fans, who seem to follow me and come on there just to abuse me, but I'm not a----," he added.

"I've said it before, but that kind of stuff is like fuel. You use that stuff, so when you play their team, there's a little bit more rivalry about the game. It's fun and I treat it as fun. Some people take themselves too seriously on it and they're the people who are going to get caned by every Tom, Dick and Harry," he said.

Ferdinand insists that the positives of Twitter outweigh the negatives when it comes to players engaging with supporters.

"When I first started doing it, they [team-mates] were all caning me, saying, `What are you doing that for?,' but then they see there is some benefit in doing it. Twitter is something that lets fans get a bit closer to you," he added. (ANI)