Blogger Robert Scoble has just wound me up with a message on Twitter claiming he chooses who he subscribes to "wisely" and that doing so makes you smarter. He subscribes to over 20,000 people on Twitter, I'd say that's more blunderbuss than wizardry. You can't tell me that subscribing to that many feeds, churning out hundreds of updates a minute, that Twitter is a precise instrument when he uses it.
I'm curious to hear what you consider a good number of subscriptions / followers to subscribe to (in Twitter or elsewhere) to make information consumption really useful.
I only follow 200 odd people, at the moment.
Anymore than that and the sheer amount of noise would be horrendous. If i get anyone who is seemingly just spamming or sending out random tweets, i tend to unfollow.
It might be harsh, but i use twitter as a sort of mini google alert for interesting content that will help me to learn something or develop my thinking behind a particular topic - in this case it's social media and PR that i want to learn more about so i follow a smaller number of people who will help me to do just that!
Posted by: matt churchill | December 29, 2008 at 09:29 PM
Hi Matt. Snap, I follow just over 300. I unfollow anyone too noisy, and cut back if I go subscribe to too many new faces, as the volume from 300 is just right for me.
And I also use Twitter as a news feed. In the morning when few people are still asleep and I'm travelling into work Twitter is full of news feeds.
Posted by: Drew | December 29, 2008 at 11:21 PM
I follow 282 at the moment. I find it fine - as my way of using Twitter is to dip in and out as the mood takes me.
I love it, but sometimes - like this Christmas - i've wandered off for a bit...
Scoble's Scoble. What he said sounds silly to me. But then I'm not him - maybe it genuinely does work like that for him. His experience is so removed from a useful reference point for me that I'm not that interested.
For a few people it's always about the numbers, and often the wrong numbers at that. It's a game.
There's not one way to use Twitter or any of these social tools - but very often link-baity debates like these try to reduce discussions to binary right/wrong discussions.
I'm allergic to them these days and tend to veer off into my feeds looking for something actually useful to read.
Happy New Year, Drew - after four (?!) years your blog is still on my "must-read" list. Hats off to you, sir...
Posted by: Antony Mayfield | December 30, 2008 at 04:24 PM
Hi Drew, i found myself in long queues in the sales on Oxford street yesterday and was using twitter to keep abreast of what was going on in the world - much more concise than BBC RSS feeds and far gentler on the data charges too!
Posted by: matt churchill | December 30, 2008 at 05:27 PM
Wow. I only follow 70ish and find that gets "noisy" at times.
Maybe I need to review who I follow and why.
Scoble is as Scoble does.
David
Posted by: David Hughes | January 05, 2009 at 11:57 AM