Twitter masterclass: Learning the basics

I'll follow you if you follow me

It's important to remember that, unlike befriending someone on Facebook or MySpace, following is not reciprocal. When someone follows you, take a look at their feed and follow them back if you like what you see. If not, you don't have to follow them. Some tweeters think it's polite to always follow people back, but remember it's your feed and you don't want to wade through tweets you're not interested in. Feel free to say hello to new followers with a reply if you want.

You can follow as many people as you like. This really depends on how you want to use Twitter. You can follow a small number of people and read every word. Or you can follow lots of people and dip in and out, like a stream of consciousness. The more people you follow the harder it gets to keep track, because Twitter doesn't offer any way of filtering feeds.

Fortunately, this is where applications such as Tweetdeck come in. Tweetdeck allows you to group tweeters by subject -- friends, colleagues, celebrities, people who tweet about specific subjects -- and clear tweets you've read. This makes it way easier to follow lots of tweeters without getting swamped. Click 'Continue' to find out more about applications.