Tim:

I agree. For some reason (and I don't know how long it will last) when I was playing with a test account, I had a good proportion of people follow me right back.

I guess in time people will wise up, but for now if you're careful about who you follow, it should work out quite well.

And I've already had someone follow me on my real account using an automated spam tool. I found them on the blacklist and then blocked them…

-Frank

John:

Twitter is just at the "turning point". Up to now, the people who have mainly been using it are the early adopters.

On the quiet I've been "having a play" with it to see what could and couldn't be done with it, and I think I have a pretty good idea now, so I've gone public and taken out a "real" account in my own name.

Nothing is worse than publicly making a fool of yourself I always think. People don't let you forget that, so I'm a little cautious in what I publicly adopt and say is a good thing.

Not all will agree that Twitter is a good thing, but I think it's a good bet that most will eventually.

Blogging regularly is a good bet. So is making comments on other people's blogs as it generates lots of interested traffic from people who would never otherwise have found you.

Twitter is just blogging made smaller and easier. It has a lot of the "clutter" (if that's the right word) removed from it and it's stripped to its bare bones.

I personally have found it interesting to be able to watch what certain other people have been doing day to day via Twitter. Some post a lot, others sporadically, and I realised while watching that it's a good way to communicate and therefore market who you are and what you do.

Just like blogging is very important to your business, I now feel that Twitter has reached the same level of importance, more so than any of the other social sites I've seen.

And certainly for now, the spammers are largely (not completely) missing from it. The learning from other social sites will likely be used to combat the inevitable spam. There's already a blacklist up and I'm sure there will be some automated way of avoiding it much like Akismet for WordPress.

If anyone reading this is umming and ahhing, I'd go give it a whirl just like I did with an anonymous account and see what you learn from it.

-Frank

Clive:

What I mean is, I listen carefully to what they say, but I watch how they say it and what they do more closely. I attribute 50% of my learning to that.

Take a read of this as just one example to see what I mean:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/attention-age-doctrine-i-dont-agree/

-Frank

Greg:

The trick is to follow the ones you're really interested in to see just what it is they're up to.

Look, it's like this. I've learned about 50% of what I know about marketing, running an internet business and making money online by reading or listening to what others are doing.

I've learned the other 50% by watching them very closely…

Many marketers will only tell you part of the story. I don't believe this is done on purpose, and I call it the "curse of knowledge".

It's so obvious to them what needs to be done, that they just miss telling you. But sometimes they miss the most crucial parts. My guess is I've done it too without realising.

It's the watching part that to me is most important.

Ah, I've just thought of an example. John Thornhill has just done an excellent video which you can find on his blog. I'm going to have to watch it again, because I think he's missed something, or not emphasised how important it is.

If I'm right when I watch it again, I'll do a blog post about it.

Now if you could peek over the shoulder of someone like John to see what he's doing, don't you think that would be useful?

Or over my shoulder…

Ed Dale suffers badly from the curse of knowledge. Personally I stopped watching what he was doing months ago because I couldn't see any further useful info coming from him. Other people will feel differently.

It depends where your knowledge is.

(And hey, I LIKE Ed. I want to make that clear.)

But many of my customers are also John's customers, so it's more useful for me to watch what he's doing as it keeps me in touch with what's going on with eBay.

At the end of the day, it's up to you.

Personally, I think Twitter is very useful to see what other people are doing.

But by all means stop following people that don't interest you. That's what it's all about!

-Frank