While Twitter is a great tool for anyone seeking to promote themselves or network with like-minded professionals, it can easily become a wonderful way to acquire attention deficit disorder.  So how do you transform your Twitter account from being a source of convenient distractions into an instrument for true connections?  As suggested in a recent article on The Next Web, you should follow fewer people.

Make Yourself

The appeal of Twitter is that it enables you to represent and track your interests in real time, and publish your witty observations for the world’s enjoyment (whether your Twitter microcosm consists of 20 people or 20,000).  Twitter reflects who you are, who you want to be, and who you used to be.  When you track the tweets of those accounts that are most relevant for you and similar to you, you will in turn receive better, more accurate suggestions of who to follow.  Not only will this allow others to form more accurate perceptions of who you are and what you stand for, it will also connect you to people that you actually want to know.

Being and Time

Twitter is made possible by that mysterious concept we all know and love: time.  However, time in intrinsically linked with change.  In the time since you first created your Twitter account, it’s likely that you’ve altered and refined your career goals, acquired some new interests, moved to a different city, or found yourself moving and shaking into a different social circle.  You could even have morphed into an enthusiastic a cat lady.  Your Twitter should reflect these updates.

Conclusion

While Twitter can be a plague for the collective attention span of our generation, it can also be a wonderful way to focus yourself and your goals.  By taking the time who assess who you are and where you want to go, you will customize your Twitter experience for the better.  And since Twitter doesn’t position itself as a place for forming sentimental attachments and lukewarm interactions strung on comment threads, unlike the drama derived from deffriending, there’s no stigma attached to unfollowing.