When you say you have 1000 followers, are there actually 1000 people checking in and reading about the things you post? There are actually 1000 people reading several sentences you post every 10 seconds even though they don't know who you are? Who would do that?

On the flipside if a twitter user is following hundreds of people, how do they get any time to even check out what those 100 people are twittering?

I'm out of the loop. I honestly don't 'get it' at all.

yea twitter confuses the crap out of me. I guess I need to give it a go... oh well...and I hoped it would burn out and fade away

Must be a stalker's paradise

I've been online since AOL and Earthlink dialup were the ISP's of choice.. so like from 1996 on..

I remember no one even knowing how to get their pictures put online. Back than everyone was just interested in trying to disrupt AOL's service with little hack programs. lol

http://www.docdroppers.org/wiki/index.php?title=Fate_X

Hence one of my user names http://twitter.com/Istalku

those spammers just never stop

You're marketers, don't be fooled by 'all the free marketing' they get. A large portion of the marketing that appears to be free, word of mouth on blogs, etc. is part of their marketing plan. They are a company with venture capital funding and are just like any other business with a marketing plan and a budget to go with it.

This works perfectly, though, because once the paid advertising and blog entries that look like word of mouth and genuine testimonials got the product out there and lead many to believe this was the next big thing and was IN, more and more people started doing free marketing for them.

Twitter now has a userbase of over 5 million people and i was reading a stat that they get at least 10,000 new signups daily. I rember when twitter first came out and I mentioned it on GFY, most people thought I had two heads or had totally lost it.. Amusing to see where it's at now.

And if you love twitter, you will love plurk.com too.

For sure. Same holds true for Youtube and Facebook. They had a ton of venture capital behind them to propel them to brand names overnight. While I see the utility of Youtube and Facebook, Twitter seems less clear. I guess it's like facebook but more real-time? Perhaps it's great if you're trying to get ahold of somebody or to meet up, in virtual real-time, if you don't have other means of contact - you might know where they are, or plan to be, by checking out their twitter.

But I'm probably oldschool. Maybe in this day in age people want to follow the goings-on in others' lives, including anonymous strangers, on a minute-to-minute basis.

For those of you that use it, what do you use it for other than marketing?

Make it so something has to be approved to see your posts and then no problem.

This has to be one of the best posts I've seen regarding Twitter.

Someone should post that animated video mocking Twitter again...

If you have mainstream and want some extra pennies for twittering try this out
http://be-a-magpie.com/r2z8mv