Great thoughts, Alex. I too clicked on it first, then read the red warning that it would auto-tweet results, and closed it. I'm not all about using a ton of different tools just to find out your 'influence' (which, let's be honest, just because you have followers doesn't mean you're influential, nor does it mean you're better at Twitter than anyone else), and I'm even more against bragging about the scores, but I do think just seeing your 'score' every once in awhile can be fun, even though there really isn't value in it other than seeing if you went up from the last time you checked.

Then I began to see the spam remarks, warned my followers to use it with caution, even if it did use oauth, and then realilzed it wasn't really even the terrible thing I thought it was - simply another Twitter evaluation tool, nothing more, nothing less, just the fact that it auto-tweeted results was the problem that Twitter world freaked out about.

There is a lesson to this, though - beware of the links you click on and where they come from, and be careful what and who you let access your account information. Take everything with a grain of salt, and, as you said above all, listen to those you follow - they may be smarter than you realize!

Bravo Alex -

I immediately read this post after you just DMed me the link! I absolutely agree with you on all accounts, and find that I am constantly hiding that I am still a student while working as a marketing professional at the same time. It's very difficult, but I think sometimes we should really push it out there as sometimes I feel the title, 'student,' makes us MORE credible! There's something beautiful about innocence - note, that's not the same as naivety - that what we say is true and real because that's what we know at this 'point in our lives.' Whether it be the age, maturity, what ever.

Also, I completely agree with what Yong said about all of us being students. I'm a big believer in being a 'lifetime learner.' If we're not constantly growing and learning new things we become stagnant. Student's not a dirty word at all - in fact it's a lot cleaner title that most & I'm glad you wrote this post.

Katie