Twitter -- Following and Followers.

Twitter Basics -

Twitter is simple. Just 2 things and you're off to go!
Following and Followers

1. Followers listen to your tweets. How do you get anyone to listen?
2. To receive tweets, you need to follow others. Who should you follow?

Step 1:

When you first join twitter, you can let twitter check for your friends through your email lists. Twitter will add all your friends and make you follow them.

Now you can read your friend's updates and check up on them.

Step 2:

Search for the people you want to follow. For a start, follow some popular people on twitter. Most of these tweeps (people on twitter) tweet everyday and about interesting things. (remember, there's a unfollow option if you don't want to ready what they have to say.)

Use find people to search for people or even topics you are interested in. You can search for virtually everything, people tweet about everything from history to current events. Try following some of these folks and see what they have to say.

Use the search function to find thousands of interesting subjects; and millions of people to talk with.  Search a particular topic, check out the tweets and the links. If you happen to like what someone is saying or his link, check his profile and what he said before by clicking on his username. If you like him or what he has to say, just follow.

Continue your search, click-thru, find a topic, and follow to befriend people.

Many interesting people and topics out there.

Note: Think of Twitter as a HUGE gossip network, you can find lots of rumors and some facts on things that you are interested to know. You just need to find the right source, following people is finding more sources for what you like to hear. 

Step 3:

After some tweets of your own, you may start to get some followers. The following is my advice.

1) If you are using twitter as some form of closed network which you just like friends and family to read about your updates, then this may not be a good platform for you as EVERYONE can ready what you say unless you go private.

2) If you are very particular about what you read and you don't want to be distracted by tweets you are not interested in, check out some of your followers. Some of your followers follow you because they like your tweets and may have common interests and tweets. If you like what they have to say, just follow them.

3) If you want to build up your network, don't just follow everyone. Filter out spammers as some of your followers follow you so that you may follow them, and they will SPAM you with ads.

Note: I feel that as a general rule of thumb, you should follow people who follow you if you wnat to build a network (except spammers -- spammers need no love).  

Twitter has the 2,000 and 10%-of-followers limits. If you allow those you follow to NOT return the favor, you're boxed under 2,000 friends.

Celebrities like Oprah, Britney Spears, Tony Robbins and Ashton Kushner unknowingly box their fans. If 200 real or wanna-be celebrities don't return your follows, YOU ARE STUCK under 2,000 friends.

Thus, remember these golden rules:

* Return the follow of fans.
* To jump past 2,000 followers, unfollow those who don't follow you - including iamdiddy. Celebrities like Guy Kawasaki, schwarzenegger, WholeFoods, and zappos do re-follow hundreds of thousands of fans.
* If wanna-be celebrities follow you to entice you to follow, then drops you to make themselves look popular at your expense - block them. It's a stupid pet trick.

If you don't, you're stopped by the 2,000 rule.

Twitter imposed a new, undocumented rule with 1,000 follows per day. This impacts whales (tweeps with 10k followers or more). They can't return every follow. 

We agree with the new rule, but Twitter should not count re-follows as part of the 1,000 limit. Social etiquette says we should return the follow without penalties.

Since whales can no longer follow everyone to see their tweets, you need a new means to reach whales. Type a reply or message like @whalename message. The new Twitter inbox allows whales to see the message.

Don't use DM, which is widely ignored by whales.

Celebrities don't always respond. Social whales frequently do. Note that whales don't provide tech support as a service. Ask favors nicely.

If you have built up a lot of followers, its nice to just post a question and get answers fast!

@reviewsguru