Nothing.

Okay, kidding. KIDDING. Pipe down. Jeez. I have, in fact learned an important lesson from Twitter in the past month…

via CarlaLynneHall on flickr

If you knew me on Twitter before I parted ways with Brains on Fire, then you knew @spikejones. I’d been tweeting under that handle for a number of years and had actually had the privilege of followers that were approaching 6,000. But for one reason or another, in this new adventure, @spikejones got lost in the shuffle and, in fact, is no more. I didn’t panic. I didn’t pitch a fit. (I DID try and get it recovered to no avail.) But in starting over at @askspike, I realized that while I’ve always been preaching about not caring about the number of followers you have, when you go from 6K to 0 overnight and then back up to about 227 in a couple of weeks, you are forced to chew on the reality of numbers.

I could bitch and moan and tell you that I miss not having “influence” and an audience of 6,000 people listen to me. But the reality of it is that it’s been a good lesson. I’ve been able to connect with people again on a more intimate level. I’ve been able to really LISTEN to the people I’m following since it’s a smaller number than before. And I’ve really been able to walk the talk and realize that it’s better to have deep relationships with a few than shallow relationships with many.

Do we all want to grow our numbers? I think so. I think it plays to the fact that we all believe that more is better…even if sometimes it isn’t. But as @askspike takes over where @spikejones left off, I’ll see how the great Twitter experiment goes. And you know how much I love Twitter…