Some of the biggest names on Twitter say in order to really participate on the site, you need to follow everyone who follows you. These people follow thousands and thousands of followers and deftly manage complicated lists to interact with as many as possible. And the more they interact, the more followers they get. And the more followers you get, the bigger your reach, and the bigger you get, etc. You can see how this is great advice, right?

For the past couple of years, I’ve tried to do what they say. I’ve followed back countless self-professed SEO experts, marketing gurus, extraordinary life coaches and super-motivating speakers. I’ve followed back dogs, running events, community fundraisers and more. I drew the line at the Reverse Vasectomy Clinic that wanted to be friends, as well as anyone whose avatars showed nothing but cleavage or dollar signs.

As a result, I ended up following almost 2,000 people. Have you ever tried to keep up with the chatter of 2,000 people? Better yet, have you ever tried to carry on meaningful relationships with 2,000 people? When I first got excited about Twitter, I followed maybe 350 people. Many of them were fairly quiet, so I had a great opportunity to have real conversations with the ones who were chatty. They asked about me;  I thought about them. They made me smile when I saw their Tweets.

As my list of Twitter contacts grew, my Twitter friends’ posts slowly got lost in the ever-growing ocean of Tweets. All of a sudden, most of my Twitter updates pages were filled with comment after comment from people I didn’t know. The people who started following me were frequently people who used Twitter software to find new followers. They’d follow a few hundred new people at a time, give them a few days to follow back, then dump the ones who didn’t and find more to follow. Their following/follower relationship was usually something like 1.1/1 because they were always trying to grow their numbers.

As my Twitter friends disappeared, replaced by SEO tips, motivational quotes and retweets of other people’s motivational quotes and SEO tips, I had less and less to say. And the less I talked on Twitter, the fewer real people followed me, and the more I lost my real relationships. I could use Twitter lists and other tools to track “real people” versus Twitter machines, but I find those difficult as well, and I’d have to sort through my hundreds of followers to put everyone in their basket.

I miss my friends. I miss real Twitter conversations. Thus, I’ve decided to take Twitter back. I’m slowly unfollowing people I don’t have much in common with. When I go to their profile and see that I’m one of 31,000 friends, I don’t think I will be missed. In a few days, they’ll use their Twitter software to unfollow me back, so my Twitter reach will shrink considerably. I bet some people may be miffed that I’m dropping them from my roster, and I guess this move may hurt my chances to promote the book. But I’d rather have a smaller reach and better conversations than a tremendous following that I can’t relate to.

What’s your social media philosophy? Do you use Twitter to grow your business? If so, how do you manage the volume?

It’s just a little bit of metal, right? This gray/black whirring, whining, groaning box that holds every one of my clients’ files, my book, all my original writing, photos of my nephews… It’s not really evil, is it? Not intrinsically so, I suppose. Yet, the power it holds over me (over all of us, really) to make our days suck is pretty substantial.

Yeah, the day sucked. In a nutshell, Contact Us emails from this site and Cheapskate Freelancer were vanishing into cyberspace when they downloaded into Outlook (I saw it happen!). They’d be there on the iPhone, and then when I hit Send/Receive…. POOF. No more email. No more wonderful new tools sent to me from readers. I’ve lost several in the past few days — all that’s left is the small memory I have of seeing on the tiny iPhone screen as I drank coffee in the morning.

But the bigger mystery here is not the emails… it’s the dependence we have on these little black boxes. How did this become the center of my world?

And another important question… when has it NOT been the center of my world?

For most of my adult life I’ve held jobs that revolved around these little things. I really can’t imagine what I would sit at a desk and stare at if I didn’t have these monitors. What a different world it must have been where you sat at a desk and could look unencumbered across the room to other people at desks. And perhaps those people attended meetings where everyone looked at the speaker, not down at a hand cupped over a BlackBerry.

At any rate, I spent the morning cussing at the computer and the afternoon listening to the IT consultant, who blamed my fondness for free and low-cost tech tools on the slow demise of my lovely HP Pavilion. Looks like she’ll be put out to pasture soon (remember the story of how she got here?). The fact that she’s acting up during crunch time for the book is akin to being dumped during finals week in college. But I’ll be making the switch to a new machine soon, and again the black anchor will be at my feet to keep me at the desk.

Your turn… what was the last job you had that didn’t involve a computer?

Last month the notable blog TechCrunch issued an apology to its readers:

On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.

After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post….

We are all shaken here at TechCrunch – this is someone who was our friend and who we trusted to be honest with our readers. Our hope is that the intern learns something from this experience and grows into the kind of person that will be more welcome in this community.

I apologize to each one of you. I promise that we will always maintain complete transparency with you on how we operate, even when it isn’t such an easy thing to do.

TechCrunch discovers and reveals the latest technology news, products and services. I’m sure they’re offered goodies all the time, and their policy is to turn everything down (or at least I think it is — perhaps they accept products to try them out for review). But in general, there is much discussion about the ethics of accepting free products or services in exchange for a review.

In case you haven’t heard, I’m writing a book of reviews of my favorite free and low-cost online tools. Now I, too, have to deal with an onslaught of free offers. I have written to more than 100 companies to ask them for information about their products, and multitudes — scores, even! — have written back to offer me free upgrades to the full versions, etc. Oh, the temptations!

Ok, I’m lying. There have been only three. But I’ve accepted them all. (Ok, four if you count that a client of mine who has a tool offered me an upgraded account for life.) Should I turn them down? My reasoning is that I should be able to evaluate the full version and tell readers whether the upgrade is worth the money. The funny thing is that if I feel like an upgrade is worth the money (and the money is still what I would consider a bargain), I’ll upgrade myself if it’s a tool I’m likely to use a lot. I’m all for supporting cool tools and compensating those people who add such value to my life. But, of course, I can’t upgrade on everything, even if I love it. That would make it impossible for me to wear the “Cheapskate Freelancer” crown.

But between me and you, I bet everyone who offered me an upgrade will make it into the book. Although I hope this isn’t true, I may feel a certain level of obligation to them.

So, my questions are for you, dear readers… do you think less of a company that offers to upgrade or give something for free (none of them have asked me to do anything special)? Do you think I should turn them down? Would you consider my book biased if you knew I received upgrades? Should I simply disclose it in the intro (which no one ever reads, right?)? Or perhaps just mention in the write up that “the owner upgraded my account so I could take a look around the full version”?

Oh, and another issue… people are already asking me for free copies of my book. How should I handle this delicately? I get a certain number of free copies, but the rest I have to buy at a fairly modest discount. I’ll be doing giveaways with the book, but I can’t possibly gift it to all my colleagues. Yet I’ll feel a little silly asking people to pay for it. Dilemmas, dilemmas. Oh, the problems of famous authors, right?

Note to vendors who want to bribe me: For clarification, I will write anything you want if you buy me cupcakes.

Now that I’ve moved into a new office building, I want to rework my business cards and dump the logo design I created at 3 a.m. two days after I quit my day job.

Please help me find the look that best represents what Avenue Z has become…

Vote on the four logo finalists here!