BellaOnline Forums Computers Blogs & Social Networking Who do you follow on Twitter?

Here is my article on the kinds of tweeps I follow on Twitter, by category.

Who I Follow on Twitter

BTW, I use Tweetdeck to organize my categories when i want to peek at my followers and see what is new!

Sooooo, whom do you follow on Twitter? Are you following mainly friends, read tweets for networking, or to keep up with general news in the world? Are you more of a social twitterer or do you post links to your website/blogs?

In the beginning I followed people I really had an interest in reading. For example in my wine feed I followed wineries so I could get their press releases. I didn't worry about who followed me, because that was extraneous. I was reading this feed after all so I only wanted to follow people that I wanted to read in my feed.

Then after some conversations here I felt "guilty" that I was not reverse following, so I went through and followed everyone who was following me.

What a mistake!! My incoming feeds were DELUGED with garbage I had no interest in reading. There were 80 posts a day by some people which completely pushed out the important threads I wanted to read. I am extremely busy and don't have hours to wade through Twitter messages. I have maybe 5-10 minutes a way to glance in and see what is going on in a given area. Now that had been kicked up to multiple hours to read past all sorts of meaningless posts - sometimes 20 posts in a row by one person - which pushed everything else off my screen.

I got very frustrated and stopped using Twitter.

I really appreciate the value of Twitter and want to try to start using it again for its proper use. But it means I have to somehow design groups from scratch of just "twitter posts I really have to read" which leaves out the other people who post 800 messages on non-critical topics. I can't seem to get TweetDeck to do that for me, though.

Lisa, i know tweetdeck might be more useful for you if you categorize things into "frequent tweeters" and "infrequent tweeters"

...but you might also need to learn to scan more. I know that I have gotten really good at scanning - not reading - and not being consumed with 'keeping up'...because you can't. No one can anymore. There is a lot of noise on twitter and that won't be changing. That's what I realized after I took a moratorium from twitter. There IS NO keeping up. :-)

I have learned to use the search function for updates on specific topics, like seeing who is tweeting about RunPee (my hubby's application), for example. Or I could search Yoga, or Wines, or Chihuahuas, or a movie title.

Other than that, I just scan for items of interest and have stopped worrying about what everyone is doing. Twitter has pretty much grown beyond the point where anyone can do that very well, unless they have endless time on their hands.

It's like how RSS feed readers started out...I checked mine frequently at first...eventually I could no longer keep up with that either, not with the amount of blogs i had tried to keep up with. There is just too much informationout there now, too much noise in social media.

For actual "keeping in touch" I use FaceBook...and even there, I have learned to scan. :-) I use the "like" button a lot, so people know i am at least noticing them, even if I don't have time to comment on every thing they've posted.

How have people adapted to the increasing noise on twitter and other social media?

I try to follow people who are interesting, edgy and with whom I have something in common. And I routinely follow friends, family and known colleagues.

I follow my freelance agency sites for updates on jobs,projects,bids,contests etc - and strangely enough...people who are as interested in the news and politics as I am! I also follow people who contact me on my freelancing website .

I've been reading several studies on how Twitter is being used. It appears there's a "tipping point" on Twitter of about 150 followers. Most people will follow back people up until about 150 followers because they are so excited to have people follow them. But once they get about 150 people on their lists they are already getting deluged with incoming messages. So after that point they stop reciprocal following. They don't block new followers of course! They just don't "do" anything about them. They keep tweeting away, doing what they were doing, but they're less likely to add to their incoming flood.

There's always exceptions of course, but the studies are seeing this as a very solid trend.

I know it's true with me. After I did that one time "follow everyone" activity I regretted it and haven't followed any new people since. Also I have no idea who is following me any more because I use TweetDeck now and it's no longer obvious anywhere.

If you wanted to see who was following you, the best way is to visit your home page on the Twitter site itself and click on the Followers link.

I never do that myself, since I'm not concerned with followers personally, but the info is easily accessible if someone wanted to check for fun, or for marketing purposes. :-)

Lisa, I think that is very interesting about the 'tipping point' idea with following and I think that is also pretty spot on. There is definitely a learning curve of excitement/interest with Twitter.

I think new users really don't understand what they are getting themselves into, at first. The excitement turns to 'noise' ...and confusion about how to keep up. Eventually I think everyone who sticks with Twitter just learns to scan - surf over the noise - or else just not use Twitter as much as they did at first. And I think a lot of people leave Twitter for good.

Facebook is really much easier for 'keeping close to people' in a meaningful way, a more conventional way. Twitter is really becoming something very new in terms of modern society. I can't think of any parallels from past societies to compare!

...maybe Newspaper Rock in Utah? It's kinda like a twitter timeline. If anyone has ever been there, you'll know what i mean. I have never really seen any other petroglyph wall have so many overlapping, unrelated conversations.

hmmm. I have to think about this some more. :-)