How do I have 1,892 Twitter followers?

...and are they my "friends"?

The answer to the first is, I don't know, really, I've just been at it a while, I guess, and I say what's on my mind, and I try to interact in Twitter-like ways. I'm not trying to sell anything, and I try to be polite. And sometimes maybe even informative. And 1,892 followers is not that many, relatively speaking, in a Twitterverse of millions.

The answer to the second is a bit more complicated.

Are they my friends IRL? (In Real Life). Um, no. But they could be. Maybe. Some of them. Are they friends in ways that are very, very important? Yes, some of them really are.

Let me give you an example. Katriord has been my Twitter "friend" (she follows me and I follow her) for a long time. We've never met. I don't know where she lives. We last exchanged a few tweets a couple of years ago, but even now, any time "@katriord" scrolls on my Twitter screen, it gets my attention.

I hadn't exchanged tweets with @katriord in months, but I remembered the excited tweet she sent out to the Twitterverse the first time she made the cover page of Open Salon (!) So when I thought about blogging but was fuhshtumeled (my mother's word that I only recently realized she used instead of saying bad words) about where to start, I called Kathy. Of course I didn't call her. I DMd her on Twitter.

You know the thing about DM? And about Kathy? She responded in about 10 seconds. "How do I do this?" "Why do you like OS?" "How long have you been doing this?" Yadayadayada. Must have been 15 DMs back and forth. She really wanted to help. And she really did. And there you go, and here I am, happily blogging away.

I love @sandiegommomma's tweets and I love her blog (which is riotously funny and sweet, which I'm sure she is also), which I wouldn't have known about if I didn't follow her on Twitter. I can imagine being her friend IRL. Next time I'm in San Diego (can't help knowing where she lives, duh), we may even have coffee.

I get to see what the media peeps are saying (mostly to each other, but that's another post), and it's almost always interesting, unless they're regurgitating a press release, which is not the point of Twitter at all, is it? But whatever, let them have their overblown-ego fun with each other. I like eavesdropping.

I tried some celebrities, but John Mayer made me sick and Ashton K. has nothing to offer (me) and the others are just dull. Kanye was entertaining for a while when he freaked out all over Taylor Swift with hundreds of tweets. Lindsay Lohan just makes me sad and it also makes me want to re-mother her, which of course would not be allowed so I don't follow her.

So, I have 1,892 followers because...I don't know. I like trying to say some things that come into my head and I think may be interesting (trust me, I know they are often so not) in 140 characters or less. And I guess it's just about 1,892 people that like to read them.

And then, when I have *a little* more to say, I come here.

Thanks, Kathy, my friend.