I feel I am a little late to the Twitter game, though according to my friend Rajat most people have never heard of it. I was initiated into this loyal fraternity at the last SXSW Interactive (Twitter was presented to the Interactive world at SXSWi 2007). I was looking for a good excuse to give the service a try when my new friend Jon asked me if I was on Twitter. OK twist my arm Jon, I was signed up that very day and was receiving pithy, clever and informative updates from @laughcrazy on my Twitter homepage, my gmail chat and via text messaging.
Then Twitter went through my contacts and found lots of friends who were already signed up. The next step was to find people I admire (but don’t know personally) to follow. One @robertscoble later and my little tweetbox was blowing up! How often does this guy update anyway?? So after some selective adding/deleting I had my follows down to people I really wanted to keep up with.
As for ‘Twitter follow’ etiquette: when I get an email that someone is following me I then go to their profile and decide if I either know them or want to know them. I only block obvious spam accounts, here’s the formula I follow for determining a spam account:
following: 250 followers: 0 updates: 25 account created: yesterday … new status: blocked
I could give some examples but wouldn’t want to give these folks any traffic.
On a side note, I think I may block @1catbiz if only for its obnoxious logo: 
It looks like Clyde the Cinemark Cat wearing a trucker’s cap, and if I remember correctly from my childhood movie going days, Clyde talks all through the movies and has nothing but nerve.
When it comes to the number of people I follow, I try to keep it around the same as the number I’m following, this just seems like a good balance. I’m very wary of the time drain that Twitter can be and the more twitterers you’re following, the more there is to read.
The Twitter Resume
@stevebaker, who I’ve recently started following, turned me on to a Business Week article calling for Twitter Resumes. So I took the challenge, here is my attempt:
@tracksuitceo: Blog Coach - Teaches clients to use Blogs, SNs, Twitter, etc. so effectively that he eventually puts himself out of business
I enjoyed the fake @stevejobs resume:
“Dude, I invented the friggin iPhone. Have you heard of it?”
If you’re up for the challenge go to Blogspotting and write your 140 character resume or feel free to put it here in the comments.
[If you'd like to follow me on Twitter, you can see my updates in the sidebar widget or go to my profile: @tracksuitceo ]
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5 responses so far ↓
1 holim a // Jun 4, 2008 at 1:54 pm
hi, wasn’t twitter introduced around 2007 SXSW??!! (not resume)
2 TrackSuit CEO // Jun 4, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Holim,
Thanks for the question. Yes, it was introduced at the ‘07 SXSWi. I revised the post to communicate that more clearly.
3 Zed A. Shaw // Jun 4, 2008 at 2:51 pm
My Twitter Resume (here because I’m not on twitter because it is evil to know when Scoble takes a dump):
“I’m glad I wrote Mongrel so that Twitter could have a Viagra addiction.”
Zed
4 Tracksuit Daily Diigo Post 06/05/2008 « TrackSuit CEO (version 2.0) // Jun 5, 2008 at 7:35 am
[...] How to make a Twitter Resume [...]
5 I think we need to take a Follow break // Jun 13, 2008 at 5:36 am
[...] wrote the other day about Twitter resumes and mentioned that I had to stop following Robert Scoble. Well, I figure the least I can do is make [...]
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