Twitter Philosophy

Another mid-flight iPhone blog post. Can't work because the reclined seat in front of me prevents opening my laptop.

Today, I'll present my thoughts on how I use Twitter. I think there are a lot of people who briefly pass through the Twitterverse and then keep on going. They don't see value for themselves in that world. And I can't say I blame them. The value of Twitter wasn't immediately obvious to me either.

I was originally turned on to Twitter by @shiva, a co-worker who had been twittering for awhile, and I figured the lack of immediately obvious uses for it shouldn't deter me too quickly. In the end, I have found it to be a great source of information, entertainment and sometimes even inspiration.

Now first off, I'm not a prolific tweeter. In fact, for a long time I was almost entirely a listener, and frankly I suspect that's where most of the value comes for me. The following list summarizes my philosophy of Twitter use:

• I follow only those I think will be interesting for some reason. I won't automatically follow you back if you follow me, but I will check you out and follow back if you seem even vaguely of interest to me. I might then unfollow you in a week or two if I conclude that I'm not enjoying your feed. 
• I don't expect or want a follow-back when I follow you. If you think I'd be interesting to follow, that's great and I welcome you. 
  
  
• I mostly follow news sources and those with some strong relationship to music.
  
  
• I have a high level bio summary on my Twitter profile, and I think that helps others find me with directed follows that might actually interest me, so I think it's probably a good thing. 

I should point out that as Twitter users, we have to expect not to read everything, but just a subset of the info flowing past. This was a bit weird for me at first -- that is, it's not like reading email, but more like picking up the paper and glancing through it, and maybe not reading the paper every day.

I personally find it hard to check my Twitter feed during the day. I'm very busy, but truly enjoy checking it during down time. As such, I enjoy following people from around the globe to get a current perspective regardless of the time of day.

Most people start on Twitter following celebrities. A few are actually interesting, though many aren't. I'd suggest using the search to see if you can find people with similar interests to yours, located in your town, etc.

Cheers
Dave