Too Many or Too Little? The Art of Following People on Twitter
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Introduction
Most people are concerned with how many people are following them on twitter, but something that is just as important if not more important is how many people you are following on Twitter. When it comes to figuring out how many people you should follow, you need to take a step outside of yourself and objectively understand what you are trying to accomplish by using twitter.
I just want to connect and communicate with friends
If you are using Twitter simply to connect and communicate with friends then the answer to this question is simple. Only follow your friends. If you have 100 friends on Twitter, then follow 100 people. If you have 500 friends on Twitter, then follow 500 people. Never feel pressured to follow people who are following you, remember, Twitter is whatever you want it to be.
I want to learn while using twitter
If you are on Twitter because some of the most brilliant minds in our industry are on Twitter then the answer to this question is also simple. Follow people who you believe will provide you with both quality value and knowledge. There is so much great information transmitted via Twitter everyday, and if you follow the right mix of people, you can take in a lot of valuable information. If your interests are very specific, then amount of people you follow will be relatively low; conversely if your interests cover a variety of topics, then you will probably follow a higher amount of people.
I want to see the latest news
If you are using Twitter as a means of getting your news, then guess what? The answer to this question is once again simple. Follow a lot of people! The more people you follow, the higher your chances of stumbling upon some breaking news. Be careful though, there is a certain point where you can follow too many people, and thus you may miss certain news. In this situation, a good number of people to follow is 1,000 - yes this is a bit high, but since you are simply looking out for news the noise shouldn’t be too bad.
Wait, I want to do all of these things and more!
Ah, here is where it gets complicated! Twitter is a multi-faceted monster that gives the user so much flexibility. The formula I use to determine how many people I follow goes a little something like this:
First I follow my friends. If a personal friend of mine uses Twitter I follow them. I am genuinely interested in what my friends are doing from time to time, and following them is nothing short of a pleasure, thanks guys!
I follow many industry leaders. If there is an individual who has accomplished a lot, or is truly interesting in our space, then I will most likely follow them. That isn’t to say that I follow every single big name, you need to pick those that are interesting to you.
I follow people I meet. If I meet someone at a conference that I feel as if I would like to network with in the future I follow them. Twitter is a great means of communication, and sometimes a tweet or two can turn an acquaintance into a friend.
I try to follow as many people as I can keep up with. I personally like to read each and every single tweet, and that being the case, that means I can not follow a thousand people. If you like to read every tweet, find a number of people you can keep up with and afford to dedicate your time to.
Conclusion
There truly isn’t a right way to use Twitter. If you wan’t to follow thousands of people go right ahead (Scoble does it, and you know what? It works for him!) If you want to follow 10 people, that works too. Following people on Twitter comes right down to you, the individual.
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April 16th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I live in Washington, DC and nobody seems to use Twitter out here. It seems to mainly be a San Francisco and Japan based application. I might stop using it if nobody joins as I mainly get San Francisco based events and what not popping up all day along with name dropping of IT insiders I could give two shits about.
I moderate/ participate in online groups with hundreds of highly intelligent, overly educated people out here in Washington, D.C. but it hasn’t caught on, and I doubt it ever will.
J.Williamson
Washington, D.C.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:18 am
I follow industry leaders, friends and colleagues in that order.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Your conclusion is right on the mark - its always been a matter of individual choice. At wordcamp I got into a quick debate (by accident) with Kris Krug about the proper use of twitter, whether for conversation, broadcasting or microblogging (a light mix of both I think). I wasn’t saying it was wrong to treat it as IM, I just felt it was harder for me to be constantly paying attention to Twitter as a conversational space since there is so much other work to be done. It also has clearly taken time away from people’s blogging, which is also ok.
There is no right and wrong when it comes to Twitter, except insofar as to treat people disrespectfully - and you definitely shouldn’t break up with someone over Twitter (though marriage proposals are ok) - it is, as is the case with all social media, up to each individual to choose for themselves.
That said, Dunbar and many of his social scientist friends, would argue we cant keep up real connections with more than 150 people anyway… I tried to keep to this for a while, but I kept ‘bumping into’ people who were helpful or interesting to me, so now I have climbed up over 360 - the majority of which I have met in person.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Thanks for this. I have wrestled with this very issue. Twitter is great for networking but can become a monster if you let it. I think you offer some great advice here!
April 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Totally. I mean, I follow people I’ve met in person, a few services and a few handfulls of people I either admire, know “online” pretty well, or are just some way interested it. I “use” twitter mainly to keep up with my friends, and I’m pretty busy, so I try and keep the friend/someone else ratio weighted towards friends.
But, as you say, that’s what works for me. Twitter can be used for lots more than that and as we’re seeing we’re just now tapping into all that it can do.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I wish twitter allowed you to group who you follow. would be much easier to sort by like real friends, news, new people or whatever. to be able to make your own groups would add so much more to twitter. i probably wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed by it then.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I am still amazed at how many people just don’t get twitter so I am not too overwhelmed yet.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Nice post. I blogged today about my ‘Following FORTY’ rule.
http://www.MoneyPowerWisdom.com/why-do-you-follow-drmani-on-twitter/
And already, I have people asking why I’m NOT following them!
All success
Dr.Mani
April 16th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I follow a mixed bag. The vast majority of my “Real Life” friends are not techies and don’t use Twitter. I try to convince them of the social aspect of it. Being able to send out a tweet of “here I am who wants to join” or “what is everyone doing today” instead of trying a mass text message. I also find it’s a great way to communicate with people you might not know that well so you don’t want to give out too much of your personal contact info. If you find that you need to not follow or block them, you can. Not as easy to do that if they have your cell number or e-mail.
Right now it’s still an early adopter type of app. However, I am gaining some newer friends. I’ve searched for other Chicago peeps and add them if they seem interesting and most of them add me. Twinkle is great to find other iPhone users that also use the app with it’s locator function. I’ve already added a couple people from that. I hope it can be a great way for impromptu twitter meet ups.
As far as other types, I do follow the internet personalities I’m a fan of. Whether they follow me or not doesn’t matter. I do like it if they reply to an @ or d I may send them, but it’s not that big of a deal. Some of these people have a lot of tweets coming through and could easily miss it.
I also use it for news. Some of it is from those mentioned above and the rest from organizations that send tweets. It’s kind of like having the morning paper when I wake up since I use my iPhone for at least 50% of my twittering. And being able to get alerts throughout the day.
Also, being smart about who you follow and get SMS updates on. I noticed that my text usage skyrocketed when I really started using it. I had to turn off updates from a couple people that I wasn’t really concerned if I got an immediate updates. And I am very selective of new people I follow as to if I’ll add SMS updates. I also now turn off SMS when I’m at my computer, or at work and cannot have a text every few minutes. Plus I don’t get SMS updates from 11PM - 8AM. Though not many of those SMS follows use it then anyway.
I also don’t obsess with missing a tweet from someone I follow. It’s such a fluid community. I will sometimes look at past tweets from peeps I communicate with more often to see if there is anything of interest, but only when I have the time. Otherwise it’s whatever the app I’m using shows me (Hahlo, Twinkle, or Twitterrific). It’s a great “here and now” thing. What happened 5 hours ago is probably irrelevant in my world.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
You break down the dynamics of twitter following very well, AJ.
I’ve often said that I follow a mix of people I know, people I admire/want to learn from, and a grab bag of other interesting folk I’ve met/stumbled across while using twitter. That said, as the number of people I follow continues to grow, I have been tending to tamp down on the third category a bit.
That actually brings to mind something I’ve thought about but have never seen anyone write about: *how* do you follow twitter? In other words, do you “catch up” with the tweets that have been published since you last used the site, or do you start reading just the most recent posts each time?
April 16th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Too Many or Too Little? The Art of Following People on Twitter | AJ Vaynerchuk…
The age old question is, how many people should I follow on Twitter? Well, here is the answer, depending on your own personal needs….
April 16th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
STUMBLED!
I haven’t gotten into Twitter yet, but I will sign up and give it a shot.
VOTED for you at:
http://www.newsdots.com/industrynews/too-many-or-too-little-the-art-of-following-people-on-twitter-aj-vaynerchuk/