I’m using this as the landing page from Twitter for a while. Feel free to skip over to read about me.
I started using twitter in September of last year, and I intuitively followed everyone back who followed me. This seemed polite, and as a new user, I knew that I was appreciating every follower.
Once some of the Twitter big shots linked to me, I gained several hundred additional followers quickly, and I dutifully followed all of the non-spammers back in return.
I Was Doing It Wrong
Once I was following around 900 people, the signal-to-noise ratio had taken a turn for the worse. I didn’t recognize anyone, most of the tweets weren’t relevant to my interests, and the sheer volume was obnoxious.
Mixed into that crowd were some people I wanted to get to know, but it was a challenge to try to keep tabs on them. I used TweetDeck to create some smaller, more selective groups, but that workaround was limited.
The benefits of Twitter as an easy way to connect to people were lost because there were too many people too fast.
How I’m Doing Twitter Now
Having come to the realization that I needed a smaller-scale approach to Twitter, I began unfollowing people, striving to trim down to only a couple hundred people. I did this despite knowing that some would have their feelings hurt, and I don’t like hurting anyone.
Most of these people are great, and I’ve exchanged messages with more than a few of them. Understand that there’s nothing personal in that decision; it’s just a question of how relevant your updates are to me. Note–I did not say how relevant you are to me.
To Follow Or Not
Whether or not I follow someone is often a matter of whim. If the person’s tweets are just the right kind of funny to me, if we have something interesting in common, or if their updates strike me as particularly compelling, I may follow.
If there are too many updates or I discover that I was mistaken about our common ground, I might unfollow.
In the end, it was a question of too much too fast. I may get back to 900 people at some point only more slowly and in the future. For now, I’ll almost always respond when someone talks to me with an @reply, because while it may be that not everything you say is relevant, that doesn’t mean that nothing you have to say is. And my email is in plain sight for anyone who wants to connect that way too.
Make sense? Nothing personal at all, and if you need anything, just @ me.
