Scobleizer - Latest Comments in How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

John R. Sedivy — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:15:01 -0000

I completely agree - who you follow does define you and serves as an endorsement of that person. Following too many people just serves as noise. Quality over quantity!

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

retouching — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:58:42 -0000

I struggle to follow 30 people because of a really busy work schedule! These people must have nothing to do!

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

jennifered — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:44:39 -0000

This may seem slightly off-topic, but hang with me for a sec - what about the millennials, ya know, the kids? They're getting older and, by virtue, more influential. They're not on Twitter like TV reporters seem to think (love to pick on them since I was one once)... but we know (generally speaking) they define friends and connections much differently than Gens X and earlier. I dare say they may be more selective than X or boomers, and more reliant on those connections, too. Does looking at this question (and the questions that go along with it) have a generational piece we're not considering enough overall?

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

David Anderson — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:36:07 -0000

The problem with following a large number of people on Twitter and keeping any type of relationship with them is organization. Take the analogy of a router that directs internet traffic to the correct destination IP address. The same technology can be applied to take tweets and direct them into contact buckets in a contact manager. You then have the capability to look at tweet history (both sides of the communication) by contact. This allows you to follow conversations by your important contacts first and keeps a history, for you to follow later, for your less well known contacts. Using a CM interface, you can quickly flip through contacts that have updates, or search contacts tweeting on certain subject keywords. Coupling a dedicated twitter client to each contact makes following and replying to multiple conversations easily manageable.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Cyber Rainbow — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:29:08 -0000

I have trouble following more than about 5 people. I think saying you are following 10000 is a little like bragging about a social disease.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

DesignerTeez — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:59:40 -0000

If you were to follow that many people or even try to keep up, forget about having a job, life, and especially a love life. I have almost 2700 followers and follow almost as many and I check it every day and I'll bet that I only see about 1% of all tweets.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

afat — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:01:33 -0000

Following over 10,000 is easy...if you have the right tool. The right tool is coming. Should be out in a few weeks if everything goes as planned. Can't say too much. My lips are sealed.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

xaml — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:48:50 -0000

Just get off these damn 'services', man. Covered digital prisons, social wastelands, they are. They do not serve you, you serve them.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

paulvalach — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:48:25 -0000

I have to agree with several on there that say they do not care if they miss a tweet or three or 100. I use Tweetdeck so I group a few folks, even the Arizona folks in my case have two groups. I also have a group that only has four people in it...these folks tweet a lot, Guy, Bill Austin, Brogan, Mayhemstudios. All four give me valuable tweets that I can at any point scroll through, see what I missed and click on links. I like that. But they need their own group otherwise they drown out the rest of the folks.

There are others that if I catch it great, if not the world won't end...its only 140 characters. If its that important they know to call or send an email. Its like where should you be at this moment in time, I venture to say many of you are answering several places. So the places you are not at, you are missing something..gasp! Is the world going to end, nah..not yet anyway,

Do I think that a follow is an endorsement? No way, I follow many people that I disagree with on a regular basis, and some cases I am not a fan of the person at all..but they do give good links, good information and well frankly the old adage "keep your friends close, your enemies closer" may apply. I follow to gather data and hopefully some information.

I try to pass on things and keep what I had for lunch to a minimum. I wish there was a way to make groups so that where I am going, or that I need a plumber would be get to by Arizona folks, in the same topics. Sometimes you get on a roll on something that is clearly of significance to only the three or four people tweeting, yet those tweets go to all followers. While sometimes it is the day source of comedy, for the most part its dribble that takes away from needed to be seen tweets.

In closing, is 10,000 to many? Probably, that's one big number... on the other hand if I have 10,000 followers or more, its a good way to get a message out, or maybe even ask for a vote or notice to something of importance...which is another topic. Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Tamim — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:38:55 -0000

This is ludicrous Robert. I follow a ton of people - you just need time.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Url Reviews — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:39:33 -0000

Personally I like to interact with my followers, so I only follow people I actually have comments for.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Tom_Nocera — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:28:49 -0000

It's said that "Experience is the best teacher" and you, Robert, have had a very unique experience with Twitter. Thanks for sharing it.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Tom_Nocera — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:20:39 -0000

Thank you, Robert, for sharing your strategies on Following. It's often said that "Experience is the best teacher." You've had an uncommon experience on Twitter and the lessons you've learned from that rich experience are helpful to those of us who are in the learning mode.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

David King — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:14:53 -0000

I am following about 12,000 people now and that is a lot to keep up with.

Obviously I don't know everyone of them but I get to know more of them daily so i am building a strong twitter network!

Following 90,000 is a TON! I would probably have 50k to 100k updates if i were following that many!

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Keshav — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:46:24 -0000

How can ANYONE listen to your gibberish?

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

josephgelb — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:10:05 -0000

I wrote a similar article about how the people you associate with define you. The fatal flaw to this is that many people online who try to appear holy are actually the spammers, fraudsters and people out to get us. My most meaningful online relationships are with normal people, not with the deelers of the world.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Ginger — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:59:34 -0000

Of course who you follow defines you. I'm super new at this but that is surely a given.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

thomaspower — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:21:18 -0000

it's easy you just need to be organized. Nice one Robert.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

catherine grison — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:32:39 -0000

Bonsoir Robert!
I don't know if after your deep cleansing you still follow me or not and that is ok with me. I have the same issue than you have because we both want to know everything, listen to every single murmur. However and as PragueBob states, we do not have to hear every breath they take to get the full picture. Plus there are always DMs in case of emergency. Or other streams of consciousness!
I try to remember Twitter is a party, and if you don't catch everything at first because the environment is too loud, you can always connect tomorrow in a quieter "salon de the" later!
I never follow back blindly/ from the beginning I hand pick my people the same way I would choose my friends in real life. Sometimes, some cards are easier to hide when we cannot see each others, mistakes are made.
C'est la vie!

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

rexgradeless — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:44:34 -0000

Whether or not someone you follow is considered a per se endorsement depends on the particular user's use of Twitter. You, Scoble, say the people YOU follow is some kind of "endorsement" thus that is your relative definition.

Others, however, do not consider the people they follow to be an endorsement. Consider @BarackObama or any other public figure. I can promise you they don't consider those who they follow an endorsement nor does the rest of society believe these public figures are endorsing anyone, to any degree. I can only imagine the campaign adds if they were considered endorsements!

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Tyler Molamphy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:55:46 -0000

That really is a great idea, with the Following and following. However, thats only on FriendFeed. (Yes, thats because its better.) Theres no listing system like that on Twitter! The only way to do that would to use TweetDeck or some other app, and use their Favorites list, or Group system.

However, people like me aren't always geeking from home. I see the web interface a whole lot when I'm out and about. So, this wouldn't make sense at all!

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

doughaslam — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:56:38 -0000

I still follow everyone back (nearly 20,000) in part because I would really have to get under 300 people to be able to follow everyone. I simply don't want to do that.

Your point about search resonates, because that is one of the ways I Follow people:

- Go to particular peoples' Twitter profiles. This is a select group of close friends/colleagues, or people i am interested in at a particular moment.
- Searches- for hashtags, events and topics. Some (like "redsox") I'm just not going to follow a lot of these people. Others (like PodCamp and social media groups)tend to be a group of people I follow anyway, or people I want to
- Everyone else-- I treat my "friends" stream as a public stream, but filtered slightly. This I glance at here and there, looking for serendipity and spotting trends.

This is pretty much how I have been doing it since I passed 300 followers (my "double Dunbar").

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

NextWidgets — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:52:57 -0000

i follow tweets almost exclusively through searches, which allows me to follow everyone on twitter, not just the people i'm following. best way to find people with similar interests.

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

jobsearch4execs — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:39:21 -0000

Still struggling with the point of a huge following if tweets are not read. No one has explained the ROI. I try to read mine, not all, just skimming and many are just RTs to keep active. Is twitter usage just a blind faith activity?

Re: How can ANYONE follow 10,000 or more?

Jesse Stay — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:40:17 -0000

Especially in Social Media :-)