I have had a few conversations with political candidates, campaign managers, and fellow politicos about Twitter. The conversation usually always turns to 'So, how many followers do you have?’ My response is always much lower then anyone else (currently at 177). Immediately I get a look like, 'Really, you only have 177 followers? My 4 year old nephew already has 1,298 followers and he just joined last week!'

As I try to quickly defend myself I begin to talk about how there are two types of people on twitter. There are those that are in it for the shameless self promotion of their own personal brand (i.e. they repost their blog entries, articles about themselves, the good things they have done, etc...) and then there are those that are in it for the conversation.

I am in it for the conversation so in turn I do not follow everyone that follows me nor do I follow 45 trillion people (which would in turn get me 35 Trillion followers). I choose to actually read each and every tweet from those that I follow. I know it sounds crazy and some will call me a jerk but if you follow me and all you are going to do is tweet your latest blog entry or when your next group meeting is then I will not follow you. Its not worth my time. Another thing I do regularly is trim my list of people I follow on a regular basis. When someone begins to tweet on a topic that I am not all that interested in (over the course of a few weeks) I will un-follow them.

By the time I am done with this rant most understand my point and start to think about Twitter in a different light or they just think I am a sore loser for only having 177 followers.

Michael Lopp has a great analogy on twitter that I think hits the nail on the head:

Think of your Twitter account as your house. This is my house. Your house is different. You're trying to figure out how to use Twitter to monetize eyeballs. Good luck with all that. For me, Twitter remains a place for casual information. For me, a tweet is still a note I tie to a balloon, which I let go and think, "Who is going to read that one?" Sometimes I look and see where it ended up, sometimes I don't.

In my house, I want to create an illusion of a two-way conversation, which means I continue to prune followers so that content flows at a consumable rate. If I get the sense that I've lost control over my Twitterspace, I'll stop going — the same way my fancy new mail rule files once important messages straight into the well-intentioned To Forget folder.

I say all of this to help you understand Twitter better but also for you to think about using it in a different way. Think if you had 100, 200, 300 or even 1000 followers that could respond to your quick poll on a potential ad. Or if they could help you beta test your new website. Or better yet would help you raise money for your cause. The advantages of a more friendly user driven following on twitter are endless.