Originally Posted By Soapy
I *think* that reduces the number of people who can see them.


It absolutely reduces the visibility of an account to only allow followers you approve to see your tweets. You are no longer searchable, your tweets can not be retweeted even by those who do follow you, among other things. Also, the attitude of new people towards you is completely different in a lot of cases (leading to your being blocked just for trying to interact).

For someone who is just a private person & not using Twitter for advertising or promotion, being private is no big deal (I have at least one account that is totally private) but it is a fetish account that I don't use to interact with anyone beyond following & bookmarking stuff. But, it definitely has a major downside in tegards to actually engaging with people.
_________________________
Asp