This graph of my tweetstats reveals how my usage of Twitter has grown since I’ve started to realise its value.

Take a look at last year’s use. I just didn’t engage and consequently didn’t understand.

http://tweetstats.com/graphs/jrward

But the buzz that started building up around the platform this year persuaded me to give it another go. I was reading so many articles from people whose opinion I respect all raving about Twitter that I thought there *must* be something in it. But I was still a skeptic.

Then I attended an event at OBH that not only lead to me joining the coworking space (great move) but also start following a bunch of interesting people, most of whom are freelancers (like me). Suddenly it all started to make sense. I had a stream of tweets coming in which were genuinely useful and I was starting to participate in discussions on topics that are interesting and useful to me.

Since then, the number of people that I follow – and who follow me – has grown. It now stands at around 160, most of whom I have never met and would be unlikely to meet in real life. But the relationships I have with these people are just as valid and worthwhile as any of my business contacts. Almost all of the contacts I have on Twitter are of interest to me professionally rather than personally – it is definitely a business network for me.

And I think this is a key point. Until you connect with the people who are interesting to you, whatever field you are in, you’ll think it a noisy waste of time. Twitter itself has no intrinsic value; it’s the connections you make with people that matter.

Twitter seems to really polarise opinion. People tend either to dismiss it as a waste of time or evangelise about how great it is. But most evangelists I know started as skeptics.