I know this is an understatement, but I’m going to say it anyway. Twitter is growing like crazy. In the last year Twitter has grown over 1300%. It’s jumped from a million users to over seven million users in a year. No wonder we see the fail whale so much. Those are some serious stats!

As Twitter’s grown at this ridiculous rate, it’s been interesting to observe the way new people are using it. Here are a few types of Twitter users I’ve identified that you probably want to avoid, or at least make sure you’re not one. Feel free to add more in the comments.

Name: Awesomists
Location: You wish you were here.
Bio: My life is awesome.
What are you doing? Sipping a skinny mocha latte and watching whales from my celebrity friend’s yacht.

Name: Unoriginals
Location: Where you were yesterday.
Bio: My tweets are your tweets. I don’t have anything interesting to say myself.
What are you doing? RT the latest thing to come across my feed reader in the last five minutes.

Name: Hypsters
Location: Who cares. You just need to buy what I’m selling.
Bio: Buy my stuff. Hire me. Make six figures in 12 hours. I’m going to make you famous.
What are you doing? The same thing I tweeted an hour ago…links to my blog about my secrets to business success.

Name: Philosophacators
Location: I’m too busy thinking to notice where I am.
Bio: I’m pretty smart…and deep…and sensitive…and don’t forget smart too.
What are you doing? Never milk a cow with only one udder.

Name: Minutiaists
Location: Latitude and longitude of my exact location at this very moment.
Bio: My day, all day, everyday, 140 characters at a time.
What are you doing? Woke up at 6:42. Did number 1. Got a shower. Water took longer to warm up than usual. Shampoo, no conditioner. Same towel as yesterday.

As of this blog post I am following 166 people in Twitter. I see a lot of information on Twitter every day (but not nearly as much as someone like Guy Kawasaki who is following 7,882 people or Chris Brogan who’s following 5,020 people) and it’s interesting to see the different things people talk about. The “Twitter in Plain English” video does a great job talking about how Twitter connects people and provides an outlet to let people learn about you through little glimpses into your life.

What I’ve noticed, however, is that the most interesting Tweets don’t just answer the “what are you doing” question. Some people who use Twitter only answer that question and quite honestly it’s not as interesting as the people who provide a broader view of themselves. Twitter can be a lot more than that for you but you have to think about it in that way. Some people have made that transition, but a lot still haven’t. That being said, here are five other questions you anc answer with Twitter to make your Tweets a lot more interesting.

1. What did you learn? This might be breaking news or an interesting blog post you just read or maybe a poignant thought you heard. Tweet this little nugget of information and be sure to include a link if you have one. Use TinyURL.com to shorten the URL and keep you within the 140 character limit.
2. What made you laugh? You can learn a lot about a person by what they find funny. When is the last time you linked to something that made you laugh?
3. What do you need an answer to? Twitter can be a great place to find an answer to a need you have. Just last night I saw that Dave Delaney was having some technical issues with his blog and he asked for help from his Twitter friends. Within minutes Cal Evans discovered the blog wasn’t the issue. It was the server and Dave knew he needed to contact his host provider. That’s just a great little example of Twitter connecting people to answer a question. One thing to note here, rhetorical questions probably won’t get a response but specific questions often will.
4. What are you thankful for? This is also tells you a lot about the person and can also inspire you to be a little more thankful in your own life.
5. What ticks you off? Some of the most interesting Tweets are during a moment of frustration. These are usually funny but I’ve seen them get pretty serious too. One funny one I saw once was from a commuter here in Nashville who said, “Dear I-24, you are not a parking lot. Let’s get moving!!!”

The bottom line is that you want to round out your Tweets to answer more than just what you are doing. People will discover you’re a more interesting person and will get to know you better as well.