When Twitter first came to my attention I thought it was a shallow game. That it would all be “OMG, I swallowed my gum.” Copywriters about had a stroke at the thought of making their statement in 140 characters.

When peers convinced me to try it, there still seemed to be a lot going on that had little appeal to me.

A post today at Groov-E-News about Twitter presented a valuable debate about using Twitter.

I couldn’t get the most followers; I was following ANYBODY to accumulate numbers . It took me awhile to figure out that Twitter’s power for me wasn’t in the numbers, but in the enriching contact from the people that I follow. I don’t object to all the people who follow me; I try to keep the numbers higher on their side. At the moment, the difference has to be at least 100 more people following me. These numbers do affect one’s ‘Twitter grade’; Twitter users have a higher grade when there is a sort of balance between the number of followers compared to those being followed.

In the debate that Chip Cheagle wages, the article he references suggests that Tweeting should be restrained. I guess if all you have to talk about is your chewing gum, that is good advice. When we are using Twitter to contact our customers or offer information that others will find useful, there is more leaway. I say, “Tweet your brains out.” Twitter will exact some discipline if you post the exact same tweet in a span of 24 hours.

There are other mechanical things such as utilizing the real estate of the page behind your Twitter feed or which image to upload.

If I wanted to stress one thing about Twitter, it is the NETWORK. That means interaction with other “peeps” on your newsfeed. Besides chirping about your business and life, (is it all about you?), you should be interacting. Retweets have become terribly easy with a new button right behind each tweet. You can ‘reply’ to someone else’s statement; do them a favor and make small reference to the tweet that inspired you. The reply will come in the feed long after the original tweet and the person may not relate to your reply at all.

I missed the impact times of those cute little hash marks — ### –. They have been overworked now to the point of being irrelevant. Twitter has added multiple search options that help us keep up with topics. There is the search for other ‘peeps’ (people); the general search, the advanced search, lists, retweet lists, favorites and your own @me lists. Users have learned to use Twitter as a chat resource.  Teachers are developing ways to use the site as a learning tool in the classroom.

The search engines are indexing our profound microblog posts. Our wisdom will be tracked and stored for the masses. Be still, my heart.

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