We were introduced through a mutual friend, who believed strongly that we would get along. He also believed that tweeting was essential for anyone who 1) wants to promote either themselves or a product and 2) is interested in other people knowing about one (i.e. ‘promotion’); and 3) cares about community, other people, the world, and who wants to know what’s what.

In the beginning, I was cynical, especially when I read that 60% of people who sign up for Twitter drop out almost right away. That’s me, I thought. During our first few dates, I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on. Mr. Twitter was a complete mystery. He communicated in some strange sort of secret code, one that would take months to break. Was I willing to spend the long hours I knew it would take to try to figure this out? Not likely.

But some weeks later I tried again. And to my surprise, it didn’t take months of research and sweat and tears to ‘break the code.’ I had a handle on the concept within a matter of hours, and I encourage anyone who thinks it’s too confusing, not to be daunted. Imagine going to Tuscany or Crete and purchasing an espresso: sure, you’re trying to communicate in another language, but we’re all the same species and we just want our coffee. We can make ourselves understood.

The most daunting part of Twitter for me turned out to be my own insecurity. I felt that everyone else seemed to know each other. I felt like an outsider. I was the one at the party who saw people chatting and laughing together at a joke I didn’t understand, and I was pretending I belonged there anyway. Everyone else was glamorous, exciting, successful, ‘in the know.’

But then I received a direct response from a total stranger who told me how much she liked my ‘3 happinesses.’ I had made my first friend. Suddenly everything shifted. I realized many twitterers feel the way I did when they first start. I remembered that lots of people are shy as they find their way into a new community. From then on I was determined to do my part to be welcoming and friendly to new people, just as others have been to me.

Now that I am hooked, I see that it’s not, after all, the promotional opportunities on Twitter that count so much as Community. I’ve become part of an international writing and reading tribe that has welcomed me without any coldness or test. I’m part of a community that communicates fun, lively, friendly, important, not-important information about themselves and topics I’m engaged in. We share a warm, engrossed feeling when we go to a link to an article that we find personally fascinating or a person about whom we might never otherwise have heard. Even if we don’t say “Thanks for sending that!” every time, we feel a pleasant glow of camaraderie and gratitude for so much sharing. Twitter is like my very own personal combined yahoonews / social network / email inbox – and yet so much more simple, open, light, and sweet.

You can join twitter because you want to promote something (like a novel you just wrote), but you can’t promote it on Twitter in the same way you write a press release. Twitter is about the other person, as much as it is about you and your product. The most successful tweets are those that are friendly, personal, engaging.

For example, Claude Bouchard is a fellow-writer, the author of Vigilante and three other action-paced crime mystery thrillers. To me, Claude exemplifies the classic, or ‘ideal’ Twitterer: he uses Twitter to develop relationships. Every morning I get a good morning from him. He promotes me to his other friends by re-tweeting something I’ve posted he finds interesting. He connects us by linking us together. He’s encouraging and amusing and light-hearted. I think if you asked any of these other folks who have gotten to know him, they’d say the same thing. We’ve found a friend. And through him, we’ve found each other. (By the way, in the year or so we’ve both been on Twitter, Claude has garnered 60,000 followers and I’ve only garnered 3,000, so he is most definitely a master!)

I certainly don’t count all my followers or followees as my friends, but Claude isn’t the only one who makes me feel appreciated and friendly. Many tweets that come through are obviously automatic; these don’t engage at all with anyone else: they’re just meant to garner hits onto a web site. There’s no connection, and I ignore them. They don’t offer that sense of community or interest or engagement that is essential for successful social networking. But for those of us who do connect, this sense of tribe continues to become ever more strong and delightful.

How can one feel friendly towards a person with whom one only communicates 140 characters at a time, in a vast network of millions of users? That’s a mystery, but, like romantic love, it does happen, and it is true.