I’ve gotten a couple new random followers, one today, actually. I looked; they were following 500 some folks, and were being followed by around 40.

Since posting this and reading the stuff you all have said, I’ve been trying to be a bit more open minded about it, checking out each new unknown follower individually. Alas, I’ve not had one yet that I’m interested in following.

I’ve been wondering the same about random Twitter followers of mine … wonder how many you’ve gotten since you first wrote this post! One pleasant “random” Twitter follower was Anderson Cooper, however. I gladly followed him back. In general, I tend to be actually flattered when I see the number they follow is few. I analyze on a case-by-case basis.

I agree – all of the other social tools, MySpace, Facebook, etc. etc., it never really interested me much. While I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t live without Twitter, it does make for some quick fun. Nice to know what the people I dig are doing around the world, even if what they’re doing is relatively unimportant.

I take one look at their following/followers rate, check out their URL and sometimes the site itself, then decide whether to follow. People who ‘do’ something are in, the rest I just ignore, with ease.

I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this when Twitter hits the one million user mark (prolly somewhere in early spring of 08) and I hope Twitter is ready for the sheer mass of late adopters who think they can exploit it. That is: offer more tools for checking out relationships, who knows who, why are these people following me.

I’m glad you’re back though and hope to see you around. Twitter is the first social tool without any real goal that has actually turned into a social tool for me that I do use – to network, tag things, get news, follow events. Quite amazing really.

I was not aware that you ever *stopped* traveling.

@Hrafn: That’s a good point; I’d say at least some of the people that are followed look at the follower’s profile and, potentially, their website. It’s a poor way to get my attention, though; I just ignore them.

It’s clearly a collection and “see me” game. I’ve added many at those two sites above, but with Twitter I plan to be more restricted.

Twitter I find useful and fun in another way, so I’ll keep that one for a while at least. Can come in handy when I’m out traveling maybe