I use Twitter for work, and my work is all about the social sector. So I assume my followers form a cross section of the sector. A typical follower of mine is following 500 people. The all-time Twitter-holic on my list is following me plus 37,695 others. The most followed individual in my orbit who is not a politician or an institution has 340,757 followers. This made me stop and think – how do you follow 37,000 people on Twitter? For that matter, how do you follow even a mere 500?

Let’s break it down. Assuming you sleep, eat, and work a few hours each day you have at most 12 hours to hang out on Twitter. If you follow 500 people and each of them posts one tweet a day that means you have to read about 41 tweets an hour for each and every one of those 12 hours, every day. Most tweets appear deceptively short. You only have 140 characters to work with, but in my informal survey the number of easily readable tweets such as this one from Robert Egger

“Looking forward to working with you tomorrow David!!!”

are far outweighed by the number of tweets requiring a significant investment of time. Like this one from Nonprofit Quarterly, NPQ:

“Al Sharpton’s nonprofit @NationalAction faces financial troubles owl.li/7ZX8op”.

In order to get anything out of this tweet (beyond a bit of gossip) I have to click the link and then read the article. That took a good five minutes.

My point is that no one who is following 500 people is actually following much of what those 500 people are saying. Social sector Twitteratti seem to be using Twitter mostly to flog things on their own web sites, as NPQ does in the tweet above, or to let everyone know of a cool new resource or tool they have found. But how many people are actually reading all of this? It seems to me we are all just trying to collect followers for some purpose other than having them read our tweets.

So I have 3 suggested don’ts to help the social sector use Twitter more effectively:

1. Think twice before retweeting – is this something others will not be able to find if you don’t retweet it?
2. No superfluous tweets “It’s a beautiful day in Mazatlan” being one of my favorites in this useless category. Especially since I was freezing my anatomy in a blizzard in NYC last winter when I read this.
3. No ads like FFMW’s recent post “Don’t forget to sign up for our eNewsletter list for news, updates, and funding opportunities”.

If you are wondering what these don’ts leave to actually tweet about, that’s a very good question. Start with things you might want to actually read yourself. Remember it’s almost a haiku – short and pithy. Speak from your heart; don’t just troll the Internet for interesting articles and then tweet them to the masses – say things that would be worth reading.

True to her reputation as a thought leader, she has again redefined terms in a recent blog post profiling “Four ‘Now Generation’ Leaders to Watch in 2010.” Beyond introducing us to the first few of a cadre of accomplished and innovative young leaders she will be continuing to profile throughout the month, she offers a wake-up call to our characterization of the so-called “next generation” leader by reminding us: the future is now.

“In 2010, the oldest of Generation Y will be 30 years old. No longer the ‘baby’ in the workplace, our peers, our organizations, and our communities are looking at us with hearts filled with hope to see what we will do, where we will take the crooked places in our world and make them straight. 2010 demands not that young people get ‘ready to lead’ but actually lead.”

Much in the same way that it is faulty logic to talk about how to “get ready” for a more diverse nonprofit workforce – diversity is here; if anything, we just all need to catch up – the “next generation” train has left the station. Young people have already begun to commit themselves to leadership roles, taking the reins of nonprofit organizations, and founding their own to fill in the gaps and create a more vibrant and future-ready social sector.

As these young leaders deploy technology-enabled communications and networking, they will build a dynamic community of peer learning and support that is sure to advance the sector as a whole. I can’t wait to see how it unfolds, and where it takes nonprofits next.