I have, in the past, been very active and proactive in interacting with followers and have never received a new customer via Twitter. So, if I am to consider where my hours are best spent, with evidence that AT LEAST 40% of my time on Twitter is wasted (not to mention the rabbit trails it takes you down that, while interesting, will never make me money).

I am not saying that NO ONE should use Twitter and that it isn’t very effective for some industries, but, for me, it is not the best use of my time.

I really like this article, as it does hit the nail on the head. In every type of communication, there is that chatter, but our “role” as communicators, is to filter out the “what’s important”.

Nice one.

There is undoubtedly a ton of noise in the public twitter stream.

Efficient use of the twitter tools & apps available greatly reduces one’s exposure to this noise…whether its specific groups of top people within tweetdeck, seesmic & tweetgrid – or – managing your followers manually with twittter-karma, friendorfollow.com or even an automated program is recommended once your follower count begins to swell.

Sticking with like minded people is the best remedy.

As @guan mentioned – the unfollow (& block) option is always right at your finger tips.

Plus, if you like the noise, there’s never a shortage of MLM’ers & celebrities who gladly fill up your stream with…well, whatever.

It says “Total News” because they added up all the posts. If you look at the whitepaper, everything was broken down into half hour segments over 2 weeks. Hence, the need for Total, instead of partial.