Size is important, at least to get you interested...

Innuendo is important too... to get people interested. And flesh. That's obvious, surely? Hence tyre manufacturers seeing the need to drape naked young women over their calendars. Hence the need for so many youngsters (how old am I?) to walk around with various appendages showing when out on a Saturday night.

And size is important for websites. For the number of Twitter followers. So, having read Euan Semple's blog: http://bit.ly/sealtree01 on whether or not being on Twitter's Suggested User List is important or not, and following the comments on the blog that celebrities are neither big nor clever when boasting tens, hundreds or thousands of thousands of followers.

As the Guardian noted a few days ago in conversation with Joi Ito, of Creative Commons and an early Twitter investor: "Getting users, getting distribution, getting attention, becoming viral - that's the single most difficult thing on the internet to do. And just about every product fails because they don't have any users."

So it is a good thing that there are celebrities with millions of users on Twitter, as that has encouraged Joe and Joanne Public to join up to the site. Twitter only makes sense, like Facebook, or the Internet in general, when you have enough people using it that there is the 'Power of Many' or the 'Wisdom of Crowds'. I remember going online in 1993 and thinking, 'OK - now what?' because there was nothing to do. Few websites to visit. No friends or relatives online to connect with.

However, us 'real people' most certainly should not boast about the number of followers. I've gone through some of those following me and occasionally find a porn-spam Tweeter. When I see them, I block them. I don't want them following me. I don't want my other followers looking through the list thinking that the porn-spammers are in some way connected. Of course they're not, they chose me, not I them. But there is still an issue of being tainted by association.

In the same way that an expert is only an expert if other experts claim that person is an expert (although who says the experts are expert?), it most certainly is important who follows you. And it is important who you follow (particularly if your followers actually value your judgement).

But I have a modest Twitter list of around users I'm 150 following, and have realised that I miss 99% of their messages. I have a job. I have work to do. I have a life to live away from gadgets, desktops and the big worldwide Interweb... so it is impossible to follow all but a select few with any level of depth. Hence the apps such as Tweetdeck to categorise them and help sort the wheat from the gluten-free substitutes.

So to return to the smutty innuendo, if you have a big one it might make others prick up their ears... and pay attention. But a small one, and a small one of good quality, is going to be of real value in the long term. As with all things, quality counts. You have to know what to do with it. And size is important, but that doesn't mean big is best.

We shall shortly be joining pantomime for a quick run through of other double entendres...