Twitter is a growing online service that has many people wondering...

What is Twitter?

Twitter.com is used to communicate your current status in 140 characters or less. Other twitter users can 'follow' you, and in doing so will receive your status updates or 'Tweets'. If you follow a Twitter user, you will receive their updates.

There is controversy surrounding Twitter related to its functionality and purpose. A trend for Twitter users is to 'follow' someone who decides to follow you. This 'I follow you, you follow me' is done out of politeness and to promote the idea that either user is genuinely interested in hearing what the other has to say, or "tweet". But this is where the controversy lies, if you are following over 100 people out of politeness but you are only interested in updates from maybe 5 of those people then what is the point of being continually messaged information about the 95 other people?

This video in ways summarizes some of the issues related to Twitter in a funny animation:

Many who use Twitter to expand their business reach are running into this issue, and quickly realizing how mass following others does not really improve your position if the users do not have real interest in following you, and are just following you because you follow them.

Twitter can be a useful tool. Allow people to follow you who have genuine interest to read your 'tweets', and I recommend only following others who you are genuinely interested in reading about, because if you are not interested in hearing what they have to say, what is the point?