phranque - 5:42 am on Oct 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

you can always get your feet wet first by going private when starting out.
this means only your followers can see your tweets and you have to approve all followers.
eventually you will figure out there is no downside to being followed by a stranger unless it is a spammer.
twitter has been pretty good about weeding out the spammers recently.