Dan Zarrella has a guest post on Read Write Web on how you can use Twitter to boost your social profile. I have to say that my first reaction to this idea is highly negative. Can you tell from the post title? Call me naive, but what I love about Twitter is it’s utility as a tool for increasing social interaction between real groups of people who then (sometimes) build real relationships. As Terry once said to me, “I used to always follow everyone who followed me, but now it’s too many people.” I’ve found the same. Or rather, I’ve found that the majority of people who start following me are people who I have no chance of building a connection with, because they are following 2,000 others or they are a brand. So, I don’t follow them back. That’s regrettable, because that lack of interchange is the antithesis of what Twitter is about. What saddens me is that Dan’s article (and I should really emphasize I have nothing against Dan or his advice) is a marker to me for the growing commercialization of Twitter. We are in the middle stages of what we (assuming you are old like me) already went through with Usenet, and the web itself, and blogs. You knew it had to happen, but why did it have to happen so fast?

UPDATE: Here’s an even more jaundiced view from Nate Westheimer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dan, the author of the piece I criticized, took the time to come here and comment on my post. So, rather than replying in the comments, I decided to add another update: Yes, Dan, I am aware that you can unfollow, but it doesn’t really address what I am talking about. My title is both a little over the top, and (more importantly) misleading, because I am not really criticizing your advice (which is actually good for it’s purposes). My reaction is driven by the realization that Twitter is becoming as commercial as the rest of the web, and it makes me a little sad. In any event, you will get to call me a hypocrite, when my guest post on MetzMash appears later this month. It’s going to be about why web content publishers should have a social networking presence.

LAST AND FINAL UPDATE: Ok. We all knew it had to end this way. I started following Dan’s Twitter.