In recent weeks I’ve gradually been turning twitter into something somewhat useful. To do so I had to undo my foolish initial approach to it.
Influenced by Guy Kawasaki and his ilk, at first I followed back practically everyone who followed me, and I subscribed to the “new media leaders,” Kawasaki, Scoble, Calacanis, and so on. I got some followers, but mainly what I got was a lot of crap.
I’ve had to unfollow scores of search marketing types to get down to where the tweets I see have a chance of being of some interest. I’ve almost completely eliminated “industry leaders” — if those guys have something interesting to say (which is actually fairly rare) I think I’ll hear about it in due time.
BTW, I suppose it’s a sign how much twitter has taken off that the the twitter leaderboard is now mostly celebrities (a class of people in which I have even less interest than I do in the big-name tech guys).
By forgetting about numbers of followers and followed and concentrating instead on whether people have anything of interest to say, I’ve at last fashioned a core group whose tweets I’m likely to be interested in. And twitter has become something worth participating in.
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