Streaming Success

Twitter is such a unique medium that people may not completely understand what's going on the first few times they check in. In my opinion it's all about building a quality "stream" to tap into and collaborate with. Building a quality stream that meets your needs can take time and and some discipline. Before logging in you should be aware of the user types you'll come across. Ryan Deal, author of http://mashable.com breaks down the 10 users you'll meet on Twitter.

10. Memes, games, and activities

9. A company, product, or brand

8. Suspended accounts

7. Guy in a suit, corporate background, with more following that followers

6. The default avatar

5. Schoblizer... and others like him

4. Entertainers, athletes, and otherwise famous people

3. News sources

2. Characters, personalities, and unusual entities

1. The rest of us

The rest of us is the key to developing a quality Twitter stream. Any medium that offers a low threshold for entry generates a lot of noise that becomes distracting and possibly a turn off all together. My objective is to build a stream of new media, branding, trend spotters and technology thought leaders. There are several contributors offering up quality information. The key is to keep up.

There are several people already dissecting the art of twitter better than I could but I hope to pull together a cross section of insights on best practices in the near future.

For Ryan's full entry (with some more details about the types) follow:

http://mashable.com/2009/01/01/twitter-user-types