I plan to be writing a bit more here about my thoughts on Social Networking, so I thought I’d start by getting some of the basics down. And of course, when I saw Social Networks, I mean the only one that means anything at all to me… Twitter. I’ve often said “If you’re not on Twitter, you are dead to me”… and while it sounds funny, its very true. I’ll elaborate on that further in a future post, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Facebook is worthless to me and I’ve considered many times deleting it.

First off, I’ve been around Twitter for a while. Since 1/25/2007, to be exact. To put that in context, Twitter opened to the public on 6/15/2006 and the first big wave of attention was at South by Southwest around 3/12/2007. I don’t think of myself as elitist (my 320ish followers will attest to that), but I’ve been around long enough to see some major changes in Twitter. Also, Klout seems to think I know what I’m talking about. Sadly, I’m not aware of a good Guide to Twitter that explains how some things work and share some annoying habits I often see on Twitter. Hopefully, I’ll be able to collect enough of my thoughts here in one place in a coherent way that is actually interesting to some people

I’m hopeful that some people will find some of these posts useful and that it may help them to become more interesting Twitter Users and maybe avoid inadvertently annoying your followers and perhaps some real life friends. If any of my complaining describes what you do on Twitter… take it as constructive criticism, rather then an insult.

My Main Twitter Stream

With all that said, it may shock to know that I read every single tweet that shows up in my main timeline. That’s right, every single tweet. This means that on the rare occasion that I’m away from my phone for more then 8 hours or so… I actually spend upwards of 30 minutes reading and looking at pictures or links that may appear to interest me.

As a result of this, I try to choose carefully whom I follow. I started with people I knew and have actually met in person. Then I included people who ran projects I used or wrote code I used. Once hashtags were adopted and Twitter Search evolved, I befriended other Twitter users who shared a similar interest. At some point, the decision to follow someone had to be weighed against the cost (in terms of my time) to read every message.  This meant that once my Follower count approached 100 people, I became selective when deciding whom to follow and much more likely to unfollow someone who’s tweets were getting on my nerves.

I’ve explored many twitter clients, but they really don’t offer me anything I really need. So, if I’m at a computer, I use twitter.com… and on my phone I use the official Twitter for Android app. I have a wishlist of features I’d like to see either implemented natively in twitter or what my ideal client would offer. I may even give in and just start writing my own… if that happens, expect more details here.

Next up, I’ll be talking about what the early days were like on Twitter… Hopefully, I’ve managed to whet your appetite that you’ll want to read that. (You do use Google Reader to keep track of interesting blogs and websites… right? leave a comment or ping me on Twitter if you’d want to hear me ramble on about that!)