I've decided to take on a liberal policy of following people back on Twitter. I look at this way: if you think you want to listen to me go on and on about stuff, then I figure I should return the favor. It's just being nice. However, I don't just blindly follow everyone back. I get requests to Digg and Stumble stuff and generally if I don't think it's something I would honestly Stumble or Digg, then I won't. And if I take a look at somebody's Twitter and don't think I would consider following them if they hadn't followed me first, then I just don't.

So when I look at somebody's Twitter, there are a few things that just shut me down and I won't follow them back. That's not to say if I'm not following you back you're not a lovely person and you probably help feed orphans or kittens or orphaned kittens or something, but you're just not my cup of orphaned kitten tea, if you know what I mean. (Or it could be that I've been getting a lot of followers recently and I missed you in the shuffle–dreadfully sorry about that, if that's the case.) Anyway, a few things to watch out for:

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Just a brief thing regarding this. For those of you who don't use Twitter, you may find this even more boring than those of us who do. But here goes.

There is a term in Twitter called "retweet" or "RT" for short. It's the only time I try to use the term "tweet," meaning "to post to Twitter," because "tweeting" just sounds…well, pretty goddamn stupid. Basically when you "retweet" you are simply passing along what somebody said. So if I had said "I wish I could get this flathead screwdriver out of my ear" and you RT'ed me, it would look like this

RT @Widgett I wish I could get this flathead screwdriver out of my ear.

This makes perfect sense to me. When you read that, you see "RT" and know that what's being posted isn't original. And then you see "@Widgett" and know, oh, that lunatic Widge said this. And then you read the rest.

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A local restaurant we frequent asked its frequent fliers if they should get involved with Twitter. And I hear this question a lot: Twitter, do I hafta?

Of course, people are getting on Twitter and using it because it's achieved critical mass and it's Simply What You're Supposed To Do rather than understanding what it's good for. Like with Facebook. But unlike Facebook, which is basically good for finding out about your former high school classmates without actually going to the reunion and having that Awkward Moment where you've expended the five minutes of conversation you built up over the last couple of decades and NOW WHAT?, Twitter is quite good for lots of things.

You can promote your blogging on it, like our friend Miss Destructo. You can ponder the ins and outs of magic, like our friend Wolven. Or you can use it for some weird conglom of all of it, like when I was lucky enough the other day to have Graham Linehan, the creator of The IT Crowd, relate both my admiration and a question to author Alan Moore–and get me a response. (It was my admiration for Moore's spoken word albums and when will he be doing another one–Answer: maybe next year.) This via Twitter.

But back to the restaurant, if we assume we're talking about businesses. Do they have to get on Twitter? Yes. They do. Do they have to use Twitter? Well, no.

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