Why Teachers Should Try Twitter

Let's get meta—We were talking on Twitter with ed blogger Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) about his February EL column, "Why Teachers Should Try Twitter," and got some good advice for Twitter beginners. Ferriter wrote,

If I had to make a recommendation to your readers who are new to Twitter, it would be to join with a group of colleagues. When you join by yourself, Twitter can be a lonely place until you build some solid digital relationships. When you join with colleagues, you know someone is listening and you can extend conversations/discoveries in real life.

Ferriter calls Twitter his "favorite tool for differentiating my own learning." If you're using Twitter professionally, how does it measure up to Ferriter's experience that it's "a constant source of new ideas to explore"?