[Age of Ignorance]

Without knowing the exact details of the exchange, here is what I would say are the possible reasons for the backlash:

1. They didn't know who you were, so you may have come across as someone invading their network;
2. They knew who you were, but what you said come across negatively.

Now, here's the issue with social networking: what you say allows for reflection. Your posts will always be there for critique. It's different to, say, having a face-to-face conversation or a phone conversation. In those situations, your words linger, but the only thing that matters is the initial reaction. If you were to say what you said in person, I bet they wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Even if it would have come across negatively, it wouldn't have stayed that way for very long. Now that it's always going to be on the internet, it will always allow someone to go back to what you said, and will again elicit a similar reaction. This is one difficulty with social networking that a lot of people seem to overlook (and another reason why I always avoid confrontation or anything that may be construed negatively on the internet).

That being said, how bad could it be? Surely it's not friendship destroying. Everything is recoverable.

How close would you say you are to these people? That can make a real difference. If you're not close, it might be that you joining Twitter specifically for them, despite them asking, was outside the realm of comfortable to them.

If you are close, all you can do is try to remedy the situation. Can you physically go up and talk to these people? Simply talking can make things a lot better - it doesn't have to be about Twitter, but could be anything.