Let's be serious, in this day and age there are two social networks that rule the land. There is Facebook and there is Twitter. Of course there is a multitude of others, but today, these two are king (and queen?). People use these sites from the highest levels, like government and big business, all the way down to your kid sister tweeting pics of the family dog in a funny sweatshirt.
While your kid sister may not have much else to add to the subject than she has a few new followers, for many Twitter is serious business. These are the folk who toss hours into tweeting and pore over metrics until their eyes explode in a shower of business-minded blood.
Where does this get them, though? To be fair, for many it gets them far. They can calculate the perfect time to send out tweets, when the maximum amount of users will be available to receive them. They can tailor the content they are shooting out to a finely crossed T. At the end of the day however, in some (if not many) cases, many people are shooting themselves in their big blue Twitter foot.
How you ask? Well, for many all of this tailoring and fine-tuning has turned them into the medieval leper of the Twit-o-sphere.
Robotic tweets aren't conducive to human interactions, meaning that many people will turn you off once they decide that you may be, in fact, a robot. RSS feeds, aside from certain exceptions, are another great way to turn followers and potential followers.
Of course it stands that poor content will shut down connections with followers, but what else? Annoying, probing messages can do that as well. If your Twitter feed looks like a never-ending advertising campaign, none but the most invested of followers will stay with you.
Words to the wise? Just be conscious that these numbers, these metrics, these times of day, these @'s, are all human beings. They do not like being toyed with and will absolutely drop you if they feel like they are being abused. Tweet from the heart my friends!