Seven Things I Learned About Twitter in the First Three Days

I spent most of my first three days on Twitter reading random Tweets and searching for Twitterers to follow. Here's what I've learned so far:

1. I have more fun stalking (I mean "following") people I know than following strangers. For instance, I find it incredibly motivating to know a friend in my town has already planted cool weather veggies in her garden. My To Do List now includes “buy seeds.” I don’t care so much that whozit in whozitville is going to the grocery store.

2. The only public figures I care about are those who tell me something important in their Tweets. I decided to follow John McCain, at least for a while, because he’s relatively new on Twitter and doesn’t send Tweets umpteen million times a day. I get the sense that his Tweets provide real information to his constituents.

3. A Twitterer with a great following is guykawasaki. This guy Tweets about cool stuff and often includes links to blogs or articles of great interest, but does the man do anything else? Other Tweets got lost in the guykawasaki flow, so I dropped him to make my Twitter Home Page experience manageable.

4. Signing up on Twitter invited followers I didn't know. They seem to be spammers, in a way, because I saw their ad information when I checked their profiles. I block them.

5. The little box in which I'm supposed to type my Tweet has a counter that keeps track of the remaining characters allowed. When faced with this small space, and that counter, my brilliant thoughts fly out the window and my mind goes blank. This is Tweet Block. I’m working on it.

6. I’m not sure my time on Twitter is any more valuable than the time I spend on e-mail. However, once I’m happy with my website and have my blog up and running, I’ll try to pick up some traffic with Tweets. I’ll let you know how that goes.

7. Twitter is not the place for someone prone to communication addiction. However, I’m there anyway -- http://twitter.com/PStoltey.