I have been trying to learn to Tweet myself, and trying to pass along pearls of wisdom from the Twitter greats like Guy Kawasaki, who has mastered the art of the Tweet, as well as the start, ( his deservedly famous book on entrepreneuring, The Art of the Start).  Now I learn that Guy sends out tweets literally every three minutes because he uses automated software robots to to it.

I know some people may not think this is “kosher” or “fair”, but I say “Show me the way to the robot store”, because the reason I can’t get a handle on Twitter is the time demands. But I know I must if I want to stay current and get the word out there.  And so should you, I imagine, if you’re wanting people to flock to your blog or website or widget store.  There’s no better way than to tweet your way to an audience who will beat a path to your virtual door.

So, I’m going to look to another expert, David Pogue, who has insights that will get you on the right two way path to twittering in Twittering Tips for Beginners – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com:

“Basically, you sign up for a free account at Twitter.com. Then you’re supposed to return to that site periodically and type short messages that announce what you’re doing. (Very short — 140 characters max.)..

* You don’t have to open your Web browser and go to Twitter.com to send and receive tweets. In fact, that’s just silly. Instead, people download little programs like Twitterific, Feedalizr or Twinkle, they get the updates on their cellphones as text messages, or they use something like PocketTweets, Tweetie or iTweet for the iPhone. I’ve been using Twitterific for the Mac, which is a tall, narrow window at the side of the screen. Incoming tweets scroll up without distracting you. Much.

* Your followers can respond to your tweets, either publicly or privately.

Suppose someone named Casey responds to one of your tweets. You can reply to Casey in one of two ways. First, you can send a Direct Message, which only Casey sees. Second, you can respond with another public tweet—but as you can imagine, everyone but Casey will be completely baffled. It’s obvious from the number of completely incomprehensible tweets (”No, only in Lichtenstein!”) that not all Twitter fans have yet grasped the difference between these reply types.

On the other hand, if you reply with a private Direct Message, Casey can’t reply to IT—unless you’ve also subscribed to *Casey’s* Twitter feeds. Seems like a pretty dumb design decision. Either you have to follow the whole world, or every conversation fizzles into silence after one exchange.

* It seems clear that you, as a tweet-sender, are not actually expected to respond to every reply. At least I sure HOPE that’s the expectation. I mean, some popular Twitterers have 15,000 followers; you’d spend all day doing nothing but answering them all.

* The Web is full of “rules” about the proper way to Twitter, and a lot of them are just knowier-than-thou garbage: How many tweets a day to send out. How many people you should follow. What you should say. And so on. The first adopters are milking their early advantage for all it’s worth.

I found one rule, though, that answered a long-standing question I had about Twitter: “Don’t tweet about what you’re doing right now.” Which is weird, since that’s precisely how the typing box at Twitter.com is labeled: “What are you doing?”

I’ve always wondered who the heck would be interested in the mundane details of your life. As it turns out, though, most people broadcast other stuff in their tweets. They pose questions. They send links to interesting stuff they’ve found online. They pass along breaking news (Barack Obama announced his running mate on Twitter).

* People can be just as snotty on Twitter as they are everywhere else on the Internet. At first, my own followers on Twitter were friendly and helpful. But I was having a bear of a time. For example, every time I tried to add a photo to appear by my name, it showed up fine on Twitter.com, but refused to appear in Twitterific. Also, if you searched for “Pogue” at Twitter.com, you would find my old, defunct account (”pogue”), but not my current, active one (”DavidPogue”), even though the search box says specifically that it will find people by their real names. (It’s working now, but it was broken a couple weeks ago.)

So I posted these two problems to my 1,900 followers. Most tried to help troubleshoot, but there was the predictable backlash: “Stop asking these newbie questions,” wrote one guy. “Makes you look like a moron.”

* Another person criticized me for not following enough other Twitterers. The implication was that if you send out tweets but don’t subscribe to a lot of other people, you’re an egotist.

So I signed up to follow prominent tech gurus like Guy Kawasaki, Tim O’Reilly and CrunchGear. But then I was astonished to see Guy send out tweets literally *every three minutes.*

“Holy cow,” I thought. “Does this guy do anything all day but sit in front of Twitter?”

I posed this question to my followers, too. They promptly informed me that some people, like Guy, use automated software robots to churn out tweets, largely to promote their own blogs, sites or other products. (That doesn’t seem quite right to me.)

In the end, my impression of Twitter was right and wrong. Twitter IS a massive time drain. It IS yet another way to procrastinate, to make the hours fly by without getting work done, to battle for online status and massage your own ego.

But it’s also a brilliant channel for breaking news, asking questions, and attaining one step of separation from public figures you admire. No other communications channel can match its capacity for real-time, person-to-person broadcasting.”

There you have it.  If you want a full explanation of all the gadgets and gizmos, robots and Tweet Decks that will help you with this adventure, search for Twitter at Guy Kawasai’s blog.  Or, to read David Pogue’s full post go to Twittering Tips for Beginners – Pogue’s Posts Blog – NYTimes.com

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