I don't get drunk, I get awesome.

Via VentureBeat, Twitter chief exec Ev Williams recently discussed one of his company's biggest problems: too many people don't understand how to use their product.

“Twitter is too hard to use,” he said while speaking at Chirp, Twitter’s developer conference in San Francisco. He later added, “We’ve known this for a long time, but it was growing too fast for us to address these issues.”

For example, he showed a Google search where he started typing in “I don’t get” — the second suggested search (after “I don’t get drunk I get awesome”) was “I don’t get Twitter.” And Twitter was the only product on that list.

Ok ok, Twitter is hard. Here's how to get started using it:

First of all, understand that there is no obligation to contribute to whatever tweetscussion you see on the screen.

After you internalize that, make it your news feed. Follow your favorite periodicals, reporters, and writers. When a tweet inspires you, re-tweet it. If you want to expand your feed, go to the profile pages of your favorite tweeters and see who THEY are following. Finally, don't be afraid to unfollow!