I first heard about Twitter nearly two years ago and at the time, I didn't get it.  I gave it another try last fall, after seeing Twitter in use at the Thin Air Summit by afficionados. I saw enough to stay interested but not invested. Over the last month, I've invested both time and energy into figuring out how best to use this robust tool. Yes, robust, even with a limitation of 140 characters per message or "tweet." 

Here's what I'm noticing:

• Twitter is its own world, with a tailored language and toolkit, rock stars, and community consisting of a rich stew of people, just like in the offline world. As such, it takes some getting used to. You'll see good and bad content, rude and gracious people, scammers and credible business people, highly intelligent and barely intelligible, all conforming to the constraints of Twitter and making ample use of the basic functions. Photo by ooOJasonOoo
• Twitter is versatile and thus, serves different purposes for different people. That's where the stew comes in. What can you do with a series of messages, 140 characters at a time, broadcast to a group of followers who can easily unsubscribe as subscribe? Turns out, a lot. I've seen Twitter used as a virtual picture on the side of a milk carton by asking "tweeps" to spread the word about a missing teen, a promotional vehicle for businesses (@guykawasaki consistently has tweets that refer to his biz, alltop.com), a research tool and of course, a way to expand and deepen connections. I use Twitter as my virtual newspaper, customized to follow people who talk about stuff I'm interested in (e.g., creativity, coaching, social media) as well as current events. 
• Know what you want to optimize.  Many years ago, I got a master's degree in Operations Research. One of the few things I remember from that curriculum is knowing which variable to optimize in a multi-variable problem space (think scheduling airline crews and airplanes for hundreds of destinations.) What you choose to optimize gives very different outcomes. Twitter is the same way. Some people optimize for number of followers. Some people optimize for connecting one-on-one to followers. (This has to explain tweeps whose tweets all start by addressing a single person.) Some people optimize on sharing interesting information. (Thus, my virtual newspaper quickly gets filled up with just a few of these people.) The people who know how to use Twitter well are those who can provide a mix of tweets that optimizes for creating trust and community. I'm still learning how to do that. Photo by edelmandigitalbootcamp
• Twitter can quickly expand your connections, both in depth and breadth. It wasn't until I left the corporate world and became a solopreneur, that I realized how big the world really is. It's easy to get focused on what's happening inside a single company and forget about the diversity of people, ideas, organizations in the world. In the course of checking out people who have followed me on Twitter, I've found sites on new media in Australia, activities for babies and moms month-by-month, traveling the world with minimal effort, affirmations that naturally bubble up and heal others, living as an expat in Prague, and creating modern music in the style of Bach. This is just from the sites of people who have somehow found me. Twitter is also good at connecting people around a single topic, with not much effort. I was amazed at the number of conservatives who followed me, based on a single tweet to a well-known conservative tweep. (I'm still puzzled as to how other followers find me–whether it's more random, as in the recent follower who specializes in discussing dating relationships, or whether it goes back to a case of six degrees of separation.)
• It helps to set boundaries. How many Internet marketers do I want to follow? (BTW–why is it that 90% seem to men and 50% of them have sleazy looking sites?) How many conservative leaning bloggers do I want to follow? How much time do I want to spend deciding who to follow back? How much time to tweet and to read my Twitter feed? Just like I would allocate time to respond to email and read the Wall Street Journal, I've found that allocating Twitter time can keep me from losing the entire day in a flurry of tweets.
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  The numbers tell the story. Call me a Twitter snob but I initially distrust someone who is following more people than they have followers (e.g.,, Following: 15,000, Followers: 10,000.) My mind goes to someone who is optimizing around number of followers. (By following someone, there's an unspoken rule of following back.) Yes, there are some people I like who have a larger number in the "following" box than the "follower" box. But they are the exception to the rule. A big red flag gets raised if you have very few tweets and thousands of followers (e.g., Following: 15,000, Followers: 10,000, Updates: 50.) It says to me that you didn't get the followers organically, through conversation and good content in your tweets, but through some other means. People who have many times more followers than people they follow (e.g., Following: 100, Followers: 4,000) seem to be individuals who already built an audience through other means before getting on Twitter (e.g., books, blogs.) They've bypassed the mentality of having to follow in order to be followed. Even number of following and followers?  The jury is still out. Photo by "Solar ikon"
• Inherent in Twitter is a sense of community. Search on #Oscars or #Superbowl09 and you'll never again feel alone while watching an event on television or in person. Unlike users of other social networking tools, Twitter users like to get together in-person as well as online. Look for a Tweetup (meetup for tweeps) in your local area. Read about Twestival, a charity event organized by tweeps that produced in-person events in over 200 cities around the world and raised over US$250,000. Check out the first ever Tweet-a-thon, again a charity event (this time online.)  When you are on Twitter, it's easy to be part of a community. Photo by Annie Mole
• Twitter feeds my creativity and grows my network, at the same time. Twitter connects me to  like-minded individuals, triggers ideas for new blog posts, and creates opportunities for conversation. It's up to me to develop a vibrant community from that. Which brings me full circle back to A Bigger Voice. I'm in the Build Community phase. Find me on Twitter: @carolross.