Marc,

So spot on, and so very timely.  I'm still fairly new to Twitter, myself, and I'm happy to say that I think that I am starting to feel some of the very things brought up by this post.  I really love Twitter.  I love what it does for my business (I've had several clients pop up as a result of using Twitter, talking to folks, experimenting (read: playing around) a bit and such.  But I did make the mistake, the "newbie" mistake, of getting too caught up in the numbers at first.

Luckily, my own experiences are kinda steering me back more strongly toward the "human" aspect of twitter, the "social" part of social media.  I say "luckily", because I'm really glad this is happening for me *now* instead of later on down the road, after goodness knows how many meaningless numbers, and everything is still small enough for me, right now, to make those changes without feeling too much of a ripple effect.

Love the analogy. It's so true.  Thanks for writing this and just making a little easier for me to refocus myself and spend more time discovering the *real* treasure of social media apps like Twitter - the unbelievably fabulous folks you might not have met any other way!