On the spur of the moment the other night I tweeted an agent I follow about a picture she'd posted. I was pleased to notice her reply the next day didn't ask who I was and why I felt the need to pester her, but it got me thinking: does being able to contact agents in such a way really help? It's possible random tweeting could get you labelled as a lunatic before you've even bought stamps for your sub. I hadn't planned to contact any of the agents I follow in that way and use twitter to see what they are looking for as they sometimes tweet that. What do we think about prior to sub contact through social networking, dangerous or daring?
I see no harm in your doing the odd RT on anything they tweet that particularly interests you. They'll see that you've done a RT. If curious they might look at your profile.
Personally, it's not something I would do, unless they contacted me first but I'm a relative newcomer to sending my novel off and not too sure I fully understand twitter other than to tweet my little ramblings. I think I would err on the side of caution when it came to contacting an agent via twitter (I'm not on facebook anyway) and feel perhaps the agents may be there to seek out writers they might like to represent rather than the other way round. I shall stick to approaching them via post or email.