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

[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