Twitter, the complete and utter waste of time - or is it? Initially when Twitter first came on the scene I avoided it like the plague, it was nothing if not a way to stroke your ego and let everyone know what you are doing.

Today however, I’m addicted. It lives on my phone, it lives on my desktop. I don’t post all the time, and I don’t read all the tweets - but it’s there. I’ve met new people, reconnected with old friends and learned heaps from having Twitter in my online life.

I frequently ready about news events before they hit the media, I get updates from my favorite blogs faster than the RSS Feeds can update. I interact with some of the “names” of the industry and I explore opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist (like having the opportunity to help beta test Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check (buy it on Amazon) well before it was hitting the publishers - great book btw).

This morning Guy published an article about getting more twitter followers, which is interesting. See you can measure your Twitter success by the number of followers you have, or as Scobleizer suggests, you can measure yourself by who you follow (which is the school of thought I subscribe too).

Guy does give some good pointers but I’m not sure I fully follow him. Following the “smores” is one thing I do (mainly because they usually have good stuff to say) & yes I often interact with them - but I don’t think it’s bought me anymore Twitter Cred. It is fun however to get a response from an “industry legend” when you are a no body (hey, I’m someone too!)

His point about being a Subject Expert really goes beyond Twitter. All authors and writers will tell you “Write about what you know about” - want to blog? Write about what you know, you are an expert in something, even if it’s just walking to the bus.  One point I do like (and will have to try more) is use Twitter Search to find topics & tweets you can add to. This also applies to blogging. Find something someone else has said, Link to it & then add your own comments.

One thing I don’t agree with is the use of a face based avatar - Guy says make your avatar stand out, and you shouldn’t use a pic of your car. Well, my Twitter list is full of faces, so my car Avatar stands our 100 Miles away.

The other comment I don’t agree with, repeating your tweets & using tools to auto post feeds. I do enjoy Guy’s posts but I’ve unsubscribed almost all others who do this, and I’ve come close to unfollowing Guy. It’s annoying to see the same Tweet 3 times in a 24 hour period. Sure I can (and do) ignore these but it basically turns your twitter feed in to a whore for links, and not something innately useful. I find I have to filter through Guy’s posts to find ones he’s actually written - rather than a Bot automatically posting something from Alltop. Use these tools carefully.

Still, I’m going to give some things a shot, and I think I will try the Repeating my tweets, more likely though I’ll have more than a 24hr break in these - kinda like reposting old blog links.

Anyway, I do need more followers, so go on, follow me: http://twitter.com/oo00_Mr_K_00oo

Links you need to follow

Here are all the links you need to follow from this post:

• Follow Mr K on Twitter
• Follow Guy Kawasaki on Twitter
• Follow Robert Scoble on Twitter
• Twitter home page
• Guy’s post “Get more followers on Twitter”

BTW: follow me, and I’ll follow you - what goes around, comes around :)