Internet September 23, 2009, 9:56PM EST

A Face-to-Face Meet for Twitterers

From motivational speaker Tony Robbins to skateboarding celeb Tony Hawk, more than 400 Twitter users gathered in L.A. to trade notes about the microblogging site

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Mr. Positive Thinking was skeptical at first. Motivational speaker Tony Robbins says he wasn't sure he had time to use Twitter when he first heard about the popular social networking site. "Why would I want to read something someone else is doing?" Robbins asked. Like many people, he says he feels somewhat overwhelmed with the volume of information already bombarding him. "Remember when people said technology would give you free time?"

Then a year ago Robbins was visiting with a friend in the technology business. The friend quickly sent a message out to his Twitter network that he was sitting with Robbins. Within minutes 75 people from as far away as Europe and Australia had responded with questions for the guru. Robbins had a breakthrough moment. "This is what I live for," he recalls. "I have a mission. I want to touch people. I want to use every medium I can." He now has more than 1 million followers. Of the information overload, he says: "They can pick and choose what they like."

On Sept. 23, Robbins was the keynote speaker for the second day of the two-day Twitter Conference in Los Angeles. The event was a chance for celebrities such as Robbins and social networking experts to share Twitter strategies with attendees, more than 400 businesspeople, nonprofit fund-raisers, and other Twitter users. Founded in 2006, Twitter is expected to generate 4 billion messages, called "tweets," between users this year, and as many as 40 billion in 2010. The conference was the second run by event coordinator Parnassus Group, with others planned in Seattle and early next year at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Stars Surprisingly Helpful

Several of the attendees said the celebrities, including professional skateboarder Tony Hawk and radio talk show host Dr. Drew Pinsky, were surprisingly helpful. Normally just at conferences to entertain, the stars showed they were as amazed and befuddled by the new communication medium as anyone else. On one panel, Roots actor LeVar Burton and singer Tyrese Gibson engaged in a lengthy debate over how much of their private lives they should reveal in their tweets. The two continued their discussion after the panel had finished. "To see them come off their pedestal and show they're just as unsure as everyone else, that was powerful," says Martin Bosworth, managing editor of ConsumerAffairs.com and a conference attendee.

Winnie Hsia, a social media specialist at the grocery chain Whole Foods Market (WFMI), says her company has 180 Twitter accounts run by employees at 200 stores. She says the company is letting the staffers write their own messages without much control from headquarters. "If we are trusting them to put their faces in front of customers in the stores, why not online?" Hsia says. But the Austin (Tex.) grocer still faces a dilemma deciding how much it should promote specific products in tweets.