Networking. Interruption. That's it. Everyone says that Twitter is all about who you follow, and that's necessary but not sufficient. But judicious use of @

Networking. Interruption. That's it. Everyone says that Twitter is all about who you follow, and that's necessary but not sufficient. But judicious use of @replies and @mentions (when you don't start your tweet with a @username so everyone can see it) is easily 10x more powerful for business and personal networking than LinkedIn, which I find 10x more powerful than anything else (meatspace meetups excepted, of course). Of course, you can leverage Twitter to make your meatspace life better - where to go at conferences, a "hey, can we meet up" in advance of events, where the afterparty's at, etc. If you think of Twitter as a business tool like LinkedIn rather than a personal tool like Facebook, you'll get a lot more out of it immediately. If you develop a decent following base that's actually paying attention to you, then you can do second-level stuff as "what is the best [x] for me given [y]" and get exceptional answers. But that only works once you've cultivated a good following.