That’s a great point that I didn’t cover in my summary. I focussed on getting value from (and giving value to) people working in a related field, in this case web design.

I haven’t really extended my network beyond this yet, but I can see that following wider circles of people can be worthwhile.

However, I think it’s easy to become overwhelmed by Twitter and the bigger your circle, the harder it is to manage and follow, so I prefer for my network to stay smaller and manageable.

For example, I tweeted that I was going to the Colbert Report. A woman DM’s me who I follow saying “my husband works there, here is his email.” Because of that, I was able to have an incredible experience at the show that I would not have had if I was not open to following people outside of my industry or interests.

You would be amazed at the random but so valuable relationships I’ve been able make through being open to connect with almost anyone. Sometimes it is people outside of your circle that can help you out the most.

I didn’t come across the “un-follow spat” myself, but what you described does sound rather bizarre. I guess there are those who crave virtual popularity as some sort of validation. Makes no sense to me!

About social bookmark icons: I did have them once, but thought they looked messy, so just used a link to an all-in-one bookmark service. Maybe I’ll revisit this on the re-design.

I strongly believe that twitter should be about making positive connections with people, having conversations and sharing info. Twitter has really helped me to connect with an online community that consists of folks that I chose to folow as ‘friends’. I’ve unfollowed folks who I felt were not adding value to my stream and I know that users have done the same to me; no matter because there were no real connections there. I’m learning how to use twitter to continue making valuable connections each day.

I came across some rather nasty intolerance tweets yesterday that culminated in a very public ‘unfollow’ spat which inevitably drew in a few onlookers (like myself), some of whom felt the need to participate in the negativity. It left me wondering whether the instigator of the ‘unfollow’ trend (a tireless self-promotor) had actually thought about the damage he may be doing to his own brand? Sadly, for some, twitter will always be about popularity and gathering more followers.

By the way, have you thought about putting digg/ stumbleUpon /de.li.cious/twitter /design float icons on your blog page to get people to circulate your blog posts?

By the way, may I suggest that you add your twitter info somewhere on your website so future visitors don’t have to search for you on twitter :)

There does seem to be a lot of misunderstanding around Twitter; it took me two years to see the benefits after all! Hopefully more people will begin to understand how to better use it, and in turn this will benefit others.

I’m going to be making more of an effort to update my blog over the coming months, and will definitely “tweet” the updates :-)

I had a converstion with a friend over the weekend who lambasted my usage of Twitter. His perception of it has come from the recent media exposure of Twitter brought about by some of Twitter’s high profile celebrity users.

When I explained to him how I personally use Twitter I managed to convince him that it was worthwhile particularly for work-related reasons, and I think he gave me the benefit of the doubt!

As I said, great blog post, keep up the good work, and make sure you tweet all your blog posts so I don’t miss any n the future.