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You send “tweets” of interesting articles, websites and the like, and you receive similar tweets from the people you follow

You can also send out your tweets. If people like your tweets, they will begin to “retweet” them to their own followers, some of whom will choose to follow you, too. In a very short time, you can build up an amazing network of people involved in your area. A tweet I did last week was retweeted by four people (there is software that helps you track your retweets). The total number of followers came to more than 5,000. So my one tweet went out to more than 5,000 people around the world, most of them interested in the same area as me.

I'm in contact more with researchers and practitioners via Twitter because I also know about their cats' states of health (and they mine) than I ever have been with people I met at conferences. If you only talk about serious stuff, you soon get bored. The trivia opens up the possibilities. Ban the trivia and you ban the social. Ban the social and you have no network.