Last night at around 9pm, I happened to glance up at my follower number on Twitter and noticed that it had suddenly (and instantly) dropped by around 30 people.

This morning, I received my daily follow/unfollow stats email from SocialToo, and spotted this curious trend:

(this image is too large to fit on here – click to open in a separate tab)

39 spammers, all in a row. All of these accounts have now been suspended.

Which leads me to suspect that Twitter did another purge last night, following the one we saw last Friday.

Is this going to be a weekly event? I hope so. Assuming, that is, that they keep getting it right.

Some basic steps:

1. Find unique and interesting content. If you’re amongst the first to break a story, it’s going to be noticed (and picked up) by others. Constantly track and scan the social bookmarking sites and major news feeds. Configure iGoogle so this is something you can do in less than a minute.
2. Craft the tweet with care. Sell the story. Your prose should be as good as you can possibly make it. More often than not the existing headline will be sufficient to explain the content, but that doesn’t mean you can’t (or shouldn’t) put a little spin on it. You have to make people want to click on that link. If it’s ambiguous most will be cautious, and if you lie or try to trick others, the majority won’t click on anything you say again. A little spit and polish goes a long way. Humour works brilliantly. Memorise your retweet number.
3. Use bit.ly to shorten your link and track the data. For your own website, add the Tweetmeme button.
4. If you’re trying to get your own stuff retweeted, follow the same guidelines as above, but adopt a fair ratio of submitting your personal content against everything else. For example, tweet out only one of your blog posts to every nine or so you do for external links. Tip: there’s nothing wrong with re-submitting your stuff several days, weeks or months later, as long as it remains relevant and useful. Remember that at any given time, only a small percentage of your network will be logged on to Twitter and/or even notice your latest update in their timeline. But bombarding your network with just your content multiple times per day wins few friends.
5. Be consistent. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Twitter Jack of all trades or focus entirely on one niche, but few react well to those who continuously do 180s.

If you get into the habit of being interesting and remarkable, it’s amazing how quickly you’ll grab the attention of others. The best way to do this on Twitter is by sharing great content, and thanks to the ripple effect provided by the retweet mechanism, your great submission has the potential to reach everybody. Literally.

Twitter have redesigned their home page. Take a look.

Or have they? If you were already logged in to the network, it just looked the same as it always did. You have to be logged out to see the change. Which means that Twitter’s very pleasant, streaming trends page is only a feature for people who aren’t connected to the service – for example, absolute newcomers, which is clearly who this move is targeted at.

For the rest of us, to access this cool new page we need to log off. There doesn’t appear to be any other way to reach it.

This is broken.

Because once you’ve logged in, you’re stuck with the same old boring, feature-free page you always had. Talk about a bait and switch.

Sure, the intro page wouldn’t work for your actual Twitter stream because it takes up too much of the screen, but it would have been nice to see a little continuation here. After all, the core userbase – you know, the 20-25 million you should really be trying to keep happy – aren’t likely to be too impressed if all you’ve done is change the cover of the book for everybody else.

What is more important to you – getting a reply from somebody, or having them follow you back?

Twitter is an open network. The reply mechanism works just as well whether I’m following you, you’re following me, or neither of us are following each other. It’s just a +1. The follow doesn’t make a lick of difference to the relationship.

Relevance and interest is rarely two-way. If it is, fantastic, but I follow people who I hope can educate me. I want to learn from them, and the content they provide, and pass that on to my network. If at any point I find myself asking, “Why am I following this person?” it’s time to part ways.

Being smart about your follow numbers can only improve your output. In the last two months, I’ve reduced the number of people I’m following by 50 per cent. Over the same period, the number of people following me has doubled. This has radically improved my ability to filter signal from noise and interact.

I was recently asked how long we should wait before we unfollow somebody who hasn’t followed us back. The answer to this is it doesn’t matter. If you’re being smart and only following people with whom you have a genuine interest, who cares if they follow you back or not? That isn’t the reason why you followed them… is it?

What you should really be asking is, “Why has this person never replied to me?” If you’ve sent somebody several question-based tweets, particularly if they’re about a subject to which they market themselves as an expert or guru (and you haven’t been an ass about it), and never received a single response, then you need to think hard about your relationship with that individual. Does it even exist?

Follow numbers are no excuse. If somebody is ignoring you because they follow 50,000 people, then that’s as good a reason as any why they need to trim it back.

If they’re ignoring you but only following a few dozen people, then they’re just ignorant.

Etiquette is as important online as it is in all social situations. Don’t support the rudeness of others by continuing to follow them if they won’t even give you the basic courtesy of a response.

Usernames on Twitter, and the URL this gives you (http://twitter.com/username) are becoming almost as important as regular domain names. And finding one that is meaningful, aesthetically-pleasing and available can be quite a maddening process. (Aspiring rock stars will also have experienced this frustration when trying to find a band name that isn’t taken but doesn’t suck.)

When picking a username, there are a few things you need to consider:

1. If you’re already known to a large audience under a given name, that’s your best option on Twitter.
2. For individuals, certainly those who operate in a professional capacity, your best option is always your real, full name – i.e., sheabennett. And even if you don’t want to use that as your primary account (I use Sheamus), it pays to register it anyway to prevent identity theft. If your real name is taken, try a combination of your initials against your first, middle and surname.
3. If you’re a brand, it needs to be your brand name, or as close to it as possible without looking like it’s been forced.
4. When making a final decision, consider how is it going to look on your business card? Do you want @PeterWilson, or @ladyzman69?
5. It needs to be as short as possible. Why? Retweets. If your long username makes it awkward for people to retweet you without doing some major edit work then your retweet rate will suffer accordingly. I would propose that your username should be no longer than 12 characters if possible. (See this article for more on the importance of your number.)
6. Avoid gimmicky names. While ‘ilovemakinbacon’ might be funny to you now, in six months time when you’ve decided Twitter is a fantastic opportunity for you to bring new clients to your business, it might not seem quite as amusing.
7. That said, if your business is gimmicky, and your primary interest in Twitter is brand-promotion, then a gimmicky name can often pay off.
8. Don’t stress about rich keywords in your username. The search mechanisms for tracking people down via their username are poor and people are less and less impressed by words like ‘expert’ and ‘guru’ in titles (especially when coupled with SEO, search or social media).
9. Be mindful to avoid accidental euphemisms and double-meanings.
10. Underscores should only be used if nothing else is available.

Celebrities naturally can get away with pretty much anything. For the rest of us, it does require a little thought, especially if we’re looking to build a relevant and targeted audience.

Of course, it all depends on your expectations. If you’re 100 per cent confident that Twitter is never going to be anything more to you than a place to hang and chat with friends, then your username really isn’t all that important. Otherwise, think about the future – where might you be in six months or a year, and what part could Twitter play in that period of your life? And how may your choice of username impact on that?

The network continues to grow in popularity at a rapid rate. Twitter’s quite ridiculous policy of allowing anybody to change their username at any time* means these tips are applicable to everybody. In six months, almost all the good usernames will be gone, much like almost all the good .com domain names are taken now. If you regret your username, and feel that it doesn’t best represent who you are, act today.

To change your username – and while there are no limits, for the benefit of your network this isn’t something I advise you do more than once, so make it stick – click on ‘settings’, enter your new name in the box, and Twitter will tell you if it’s available. And then be smart and let people know. While there are many valid reasons why changing your username makes sense, without making an announcement you might find it’s alarmingly easy to disappear.

* It’s so ridiculous, that I would expect this option to have been phased out by the end of 2009.