I am now a TWITTER...ATTN: Pete Egeler

I disagree with following more people. And Doubly disagree with number 7 - unfollow people who don't follow you back. Because it Proves you are NOT interested in what they write but only want followers for your stuff.

BUT

In all likelihood, you'll only end up with people who also think like you and just want Followers and have no interest in reading what you twit.

You do NOT need to keep your followers within 5% of your following count. Ashton Kutsher is following 40 and has 30,700 followers. His misus - Demi - is following 31 and has 20,700 followers. And actor Stephen Fry has 146,600 followers.

Can you imagine trying to work your numbers into this? It'd mean Fry should follow 139,270 people. And there ain't no way a person can Physically read all the Tweets from so many people - not to mention the Direct Messages as well.

My take is... follow people you want to read things from. This way you keep your Received Twits within your areas of interest. And your Twits go into other people's areas of interest.

Your way sees a bunch of people all tweeting and no-one reading. Just like placing ads in a FFA ezine. People subscribe not to read ads but to Place ads. Ads which are seen by people who don't read them and only subscribed so they could place ads. And it ends up Negating the usefullness of Twitter.

When everyone is talking, no-one is listening.

Michael Ross

[Ankesh]

Thanks Michael for your opinion.

What you do on Twitter depends on your purpose.

Do you just want to be aware of news?
Do you just want to have conversations with people?
Or do you also want to use twitter to promote yourself?

I personally want to use Twitter to promote myself too. And I don't see an easier way of increasing my number of followers - unless I'm already popular - than to following people and then un-following the ones who don't show an interest in me.

Of course I don't un-follow everyone who doesn't follow me back. But I do un-follow many of them.

And because people use twitter for lots of various reasons - and only a few people use it conciously as a promotional tool - I don't see twitter becoming like FFA ezines.

Ankesh,

Advocating following people just so they will follow you, is Akin to a FFA page or ezine. Because no-one is interested in what the other has to say, they just want Numbers for them to say stuff to.

When everyone is talking, no-one is listening.

When everyone is tweeting, no-one is reading - because they cannot physically read thousands of messages, nor do they want to as they only want people to send messages to.

THAT, is what you advocate. And in the end it makes Twitter useless. Like an FFA where people promote themselves to others who are promoting themselves while having no interest in the incoming promotions.

If that's what you want to do, fine. Just be aware that you are creating a list of people who don't have the physical ability to read your promotions. Making them, a waste of your time for the result.

Michael Ross