by Silva Payne

Created on: December 10, 2009   Last Updated: May 31, 2012

Twitter is a relative newcomer to the social networking scene, yet it has taken the on-line community by storm. Twitter is a micro-blogging site with the basic premise of the site is to post (or “tweet”) in 140 characters or less an answer to the question “what's happening?”. Most Twitter users however have expanded on the idea and the site is used for a multitude of purposes and expressions.

Followers are the people on Twitter who decide to regularly look at your tweets. There are several ways to get followers. You may wonder why you might want or need followers, particularly those individuals who you do not know in real life. This is where Twitter differs significantly from MySpace (which was originally set up to promote bands and musicians), Facebook and Bebo (which both rely on the “family and friends” style of social networking). Twitter allows users to randomly see what anyone else is doing, provided their tweets are made public.

The most simple way to get followers on Twitter is to follow some people yourself. There is a caveat to this however, in that no one is likely to follow you if you do not also tweet something original and interesting on a regular basis. The exception to this is Twitter accounts used to promote a specific subject or interest, where the majority of tweets may be re-tweeted from other users or may be news articles on a particular subject. There are many other web sites that suggest they can get you a large number of followers just for signing up with them, but this is rarely the case. The best and most effective way is to do the work yourself.

If you are using Twitter as just a distraction while you are on the Internet, and have no ulterior motive to promote anything yourself, then simply enter a word or two into the “Find People” search box. You should be presented with a list of Tweeters who either have user-names or have tweeted related to the word you entered. As a very basic starting point, you could try following perhaps the top 10 people in that list.

From there, take a look at each of those people's Twitter home pages. You will see to the bottom right of the page a block of small squares. These are the images (or avatars) used by people who that person is themselves following. Try clicking on a random square, and then follow that person as well. You can repeat the process as many times as you want, or follow every second or third person. The only disadvantage with this approach

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