And here's something it took me a long time to learn and adapt to:
Just because somebody is really cool/smart/one of your favorite thinkers, doesn't mean you should follow them.
When I first got to Twitter, I followed a lot of the writers/programmers/thinkers I admired. And while I still admire their work and think they're inspirational people, I had to unfollow many of them for the following reasons:
* They never tweeted about the things that otherwise made them interesting to me (they have every right to do this, just not a good fit for me on Twitter.)
* They used Twitter as their venting medium. (Well-known people tend to fly a lot, go to hotels a lot, and have many opportunities to be let down by "incompetence." Twitter has been their preferred medium to talk about such.) Again, I think this is fine. It's actually really healthy to vent. But it's not so great to hear it all the time.
* They were stressed a LOT. And it made me stressed. It makes sense. Productive smart people that are interesting to me are probably busy and have meetings and deadlines etc. But I felt their pain too acutely.
Anyway... I think Twitter is great. And everything I mentioned above is fine in moderation. (And it's even fine in abundance, just not for me.)
Really put some time curating your Twitter follower list, and it can be great.