In an ironic turn of events, I found that I lost a few Twitter followers recently and I can only attribute it to my last post where I called out those that reply-to-all with short, non-descriptive replies to another Tweeter: an example would be someone that sends out a tweet to all of their Twitter followers that says “@soandso that’s great!” … keeping everyone else in the dark as to what exactly was “great” about “that” …
Some people commented that this is the whole point of Twitter; an unfettered method of communicating to-and-from a global audience.
That being said, I wanted to clarify something. I believe that Twitter is an excellent social medium to broadcast a message and bring in a whole world as your audience … brilliant!
Twitter can be like having a loud conversation on your phone in front of a bunch of people that follow your every move, or can be likened to shouting something from the bell tower at the NY Trading floor to the sea of people below hanging on your every word. In any case, it enables someone to say something very briefly and then let loose a flood of follower-activity to either view and internalize your message or seek more information on their own. Pitch-free!
There have been many times where, even in a very short convo between someone I follow and someone I don’t, that my interest has been piqued and I have looked up someone’s profile to learn more about them, tracing back through the message (you can trace back through someone’s reply on Twitter by clicking on the “in reply to…” link at the bottom of their message - either from Twitter.com or from a 3rd party app such as TweetDeck). I have found many intriguing people to follow this way and have developed some great new friendships and even some business opportunities.
In short, if you want to lose Twitter followers, read my first post. Or, do like I did and actually write an article similar to my first post and let a bunch of people un-follow you 
Then you can do like I am and backtrack a bit and tell everyone what you forgot to tell them the first time; there is no one way, or one right way, to use Twitter. Just use it wisely - whatever that means to you.
P.S. Thanks to Michael Samuelson (@mlsamuelson) for being really funny and insightful, constantly.
October 28th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I did substance-less @replies when I was a Twitter newb, but your last post was right on the mark.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Well said! Keep up the great posts!