DISQUS

@silverton · 4 months ago

This is called pure Thought Leadership. Really dig the approach, Robert. There's no reason you would have seen even a glimpse of my own grappling with how to do some version of Twitter Reboot, but it's there FWIW http://u.nu/37jr While we do take somewhat divergent approaches, I also think they're also complimentary in some ways. I'm less interested in Brands and Power and more interested in achieving Productive Coherence in Massive Realtime Collective Cognition. Neither approach is better or wrong, they're just different. So in my case, I'm finally figuring out how to let the Stream of Consciousness Archive (which can be NOISY) go ahead and archive on http://tr.im/lifestream and then only "leak" stuff to Twitter that I hope will contribute to that lobe of the expanding #cognosphere. Anyway, the reason I'm so excited by what I see in the Google Wave Sandbox so far is that it seems to lend itself to hacking this Extended Entangled Cognition potential that these early tools have only barely illuminated. Even by this candlelight, it's been super exciting to witness and participate in, to some small extent. This has been a significant step.

cheeky_geeky · 4 months ago

This is NOT thought leadership. This is thought laggership. So many people figured this out so long ago, this article actually looks ridiculous from someone so familar with technology. Next, it will appear in Fast Company to "educate" their readers, too.

alex · 4 months ago

I am with Cheeky_geek on this. That is one service finally figured out. Better late than never I guess :) While you are at it: How about retracting that lamenting about the 5000 friends limit on facebook next?

Nathan Bowers · 4 months ago

Agree with cheeky_geeky.

Another benefit of following few people: Your direct message inbox is both white-listed and high signal (i.e. no rambling).

@silverton · 4 months ago

Actually, I don't disagree with you, cheeky. Like economist's "compared to what" Genuine Leadership is always a "compared to whom" phenomenon. Compared to FC, and 90% of the population, it's pure leadership. Compared to core innovators, not so much.

@silverton · 4 months ago

Quick clarification: it's pretty damned hard to be *both* a core innovator *and* keep up with a planet full of innovation! Maybe those two get a bit conflated at times. IMO, Robert has played a very, very unique role in the evolution of Social Media itself; I'd go so far as to propose that history should include his name as candidate for Father of Social Media, itself. But let's move on. At some marginal risk of too hasty a topical departure, I'd like to interleave one other pertinent topic, here, for those still following. (Note: Please read CAPS below as bold text, not shouts; thanks!) I'd like to continue the conversation here, but I also want THE MARGINAL ECONOMIC VALUE OF MY COMMENTS to remain my own -- and YOU should maintain the value of YOUR COMMENTS, as well. It's utterly undebatable that every single SECOND that people stay engaged with YOUR ideas, however fleeting, they are more likely to click on adjacent content. That means, WE are the "stick" to many such sites' stickiness. This gets amplified a million times in the context of video communities like YouTube; yet sites like Seesmic that could take advantage of this simple realization continue to resist or ignore the obvious opportunity to challenge the conventional, centralized, walled-garden, ad revenue circulation conventions. Why? Well, greed, of course; despite near universal understanding of the role of greed in nearly destroying the global economic system (an outcome that may not yet be avoidable, BTW). In any case, I've referred to the aforementioned de-centralized, distributed ad revenue circulation model variably as "User As Content" and "Conversation As Content" on the interwebz. Feel free to "Bing goes the Internet" on those phrases if you like. The point here is: the longer we're participating on any "hub" site ... personality-driven or corporate -- we're giving away the store for free, because OUR CONVERSATION *is* The Intrinsic Value Draw. This is one of my hopes for technologies *like* Google Wave, or if wave can't expressly deliver it: the capability of inter-twining conversation in a way that individual participants keep possession of THEIR OWN VALUE. I'm not talking about failed penny-per-email or micro-payment-per-click schemes from the 1970's. However, to continue this discussion of Genuine Thought Leadership, let's maybe experiment with that over here http://u.nu/68sr if you're so inclined, of course. Thanks for the great comments already.

Steven E. Streight · 4 months ago

You took my hint when I tweeted at you "Wanting to follow more than 1,000 people per day makes you look crazy!" LOL That's the second time in history that you took my advice. The first time was a certain book title!

You rock Robert. You are the reason all the early adaptors flocked to Twitter 3 years ago.

Paul Chaney · 4 months ago

I'm with you Steven. Some people make an Olympic sport out of criticizing Robert. I ask, where were they when he was setting trends and breaking new ground. And to think that he's received little credit for his evangelism of Friendfeed (I mean, he put them on the map) is incredulous.

Yea, I'm a fan of Scoble, no doubt. Unapologetically so.

adamjackson · 4 months ago

I decided to follow you back in the day when you were around 9K followers which I think was around December of 2007. You were auto-following back even then, I think.

It was mostly because you covered companies that I was interested in and thank goodness you still do that because that's what interests me more.

These days, my appreciate of your FriendFeed posts isn't always about YOUR content, it's about the rich conversations that take place on FriendFeed in response to your posts. This is very valuable to me and it feels like an intelligent roundtable discussion every day any time I want to stop by.

adamjackson · 4 months ago

BTW, I feel like following 1,400 people is still too many but given that's a sharp drop from 100K, I'll let you slide :P

Marshall · 4 months ago

First! lol

Marshall · 4 months ago

doh! i see now that was "comment on FriendFeed and I'll follow you" must confess i haven't checked to see if brainless scanning prohibits being followed. :)

mike lopez · 4 months ago

qq

ZacharyTG · 4 months ago

Hey. I love your blog. The Google Friend Connect is nice, but a little annoying. The integration of Disqus is nice as well. Love your FriendFeed as well. Wish more people subscribed to me, I push out content, nobody views it. Thanks.

seanalex · 4 months ago

I had a slew of people follow me after you "re-followed" me. Some were definitely bots/trolls for adult entertainment sites. This is why I follow very few.

jennyjenjen · 4 months ago

Well I'm honored! How long will you be here in lovely Boulder?

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

We will be here until Friday night.

jennyjenjen · 4 months ago

Cool! Well hopefully I can catch some of you during the day on Friday. What are the big plans for Friday?

Theresa Smith · 4 months ago

Enjoyed your post. Sounds like inspiration for a new blog post...

Katie Bishop · 4 months ago

I'm pretty new to Twitter, but I follow people who I find interesting and/or informative. People that can provide good information on a variety of topics of both personal and professional interest.

Anton Mosyagin · 4 months ago

Looks much like New Twistament or Twi-Evangelion ) Can I translate it for my Russian geek community? No kidding - I think your advices are very simple and effective – and life-tested.

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

Absolutely! Thanks!

jwewrite · 4 months ago

Robert, I followed you because I was told you were interesting. You followed me back. I was very surprised. I didn't know people were supposed to automatically re-follow. I just couldn't bring myself to do it though. I'll keep following you because I get value. BTW, that video of the CTO meeting was really informative. Thanks.

Rolando Peralta · 4 months ago

Great Post! I hope some people start realizing that tweet about their lunch is not as "interesting" as they think.
about me? well, Twitter had not become too noisy yet, maybe becuase I pick all people I want to follow. If they're tweeting something interesting about marketing or creativity, I'll surely follow them. But I have to confess that I've been doing it very slow, maybe.
cheers,

Gregg Le Blanc · 4 months ago

I think it's a great thing to do... I need to weed through some of my noisier followings because, while some of their information is great, they tweet so often, it crowds out real people that say something interesting once a day.

Of course, I can barely keep up with a 1/10th of your quantity of followings! I need to get paid to read this stuff!

So if you follow on FriendFeed, do you also have to follow on Twitter? Or vice versa?

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

You can follow me on either FriendFeed or Twitter, or both. You are more likely to get a follow back on FriendFeed, though.

Gregg Le Blanc · 4 months ago

Yeah, I thought it should be one or the other. You follow me on Friendfeed and that's great! That makes it easier to share pics on the next photowalk we go on.

I removed about 4 really noisy Twitter follows I had and suddenly my feed is so much nicer to read!

Keith · 4 months ago

Robert your posts serves as a very good reference for people needing criteria to judge who they follow. I'm glad you increased your Signal-to-Noise ratio because much of what I value about you is your ability to highlight interesting topics and trends.

Glad you did and its quite classy to give kudos to Loic concerning this issue. It will be interesting to watch your rate of following on the next few weeks.

StevenHodson · 4 months ago

I was wondering how long it would take until you did this Robert.

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

I would have done it sooner if I hadn't been so caught up with FriendFeed, which protected me from the worst of the nosie (I was actually reading most of my favorite Twitterers over on FriendFeed). But the DM spam just became unbearable and forced the issue.

Wolfgang G. Wettach · 4 months ago

Hi Robert,

the one thing you didn't mention which I asked myself when reading this, was probably more obvious to non-americans: How about language?
The majority of my original posts are in english, most of my @replies are in German. Would that keep you from following, if a sizeable number of posts is non-english?

As for myself, I never turned on auto-follow. I'll follow if the person who followed me writes any kind of reasonable @replies or RTs, i.e. if the person in question seems interested in engaging in bidirectional communication. If not, I assume they're happy to see my tweets as one more broadcasting service.

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

I subscribe to a few non-English ones, mostly over in FriendFeed where I can translate them quickly. But, yeah, I'm biased toward English speakers.

app · 4 months ago

I find myself subscribing to much more non-English ones than before, mainly because of Micah's translation script. Before I had to copy & paste to translate and that just took too much time. Now it's all automatic and wonderful.

jwest38765 · 4 months ago

Meh. I was expecting this for eons now, I'm surprised it took this long honestly. When you were constantly stats-pinging on the blog and Friendfeed about how many people were followng/being followed, I just knew the noise level had to to just be crazy. And that was a lonnnng time ago way before spam appeared so you've just been living with having to manage the noise level I'm sure. Good to see you come around, I initially thought you were leading the way to something new, but nah...crowds are still crowds whether it's on noise from Twitter or in person.

BTW Robert you need to keep updating your Google Reader shared items, that's all I follow on you anymore and you have some good RSS feeds now and then. Don't un-friend me there!

74associates · 4 months ago

i hate you.

74associates · 4 months ago

because you can unfriend that many. no fair.

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

You can too.

Ricky Maveety · 4 months ago

I can see why you would do that. Following 100,000 people would be next to impossible. My own thought (not that I have that many followers) was to have two Twitter accounts, one for my personal tweets, and one for my technology oriented tweets. Is that something you would think would work well in the long term?? I've set both accounts up, but haven't started posting (or following) anyone on the non-personal account yet. Which means, at this point in time you might still end up reading about what I had for lunch (although I do try to keep those posts to an absolute minimum).

Gary Arndt · 4 months ago

Are you going to cut back on your FriendFeed followers as well? If not, why?

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

No, because FriendFeed lets me put them into lists. I can separate out my favorite people from the rest via a list. This is something that Twitter can not do (many Twitter clients like PeopleBrowsr, TweetDeck, and Seesmic can, but not at a deep level like FriendFeed can).

John Button · 4 months ago

Good advice. I just set up tweetdeck so I could filter what I saw ... just needed to reduce the auto-postings.

While I appreciate folks sharing comments from blogs that they admire and wish to share/promote, I found I began to discount the value their tweets because they didn't also offer what made the blog post important to them ... they were not sharing their own views.

And new to twitter and not aware of the etiquette ... it just didn't seem right that they were not acknowledging the source, although the 140 limit doesn't help.

Anyway, thanks for the advice on this and lots more Robert - most recently, the live video of the US CTO was great! Thanks for it all!

timfederwitz · 4 months ago

I kind of agree with you, John, on tweets with links that don't say much about the source or what their views are, but I have found it sometimes impossible to do myself because of the 140 character limit. I started to post only on FriendFeed, which in turn posted to Twitter with a blurb and then a link to the post on FriendFeed. At least it gave someone a taste and then allowed them to see more before looking at the reference. Not sure it works well... I don't personally have many followers, so I have no way to know if people appreciate that or not.

John Button · 4 months ago

Well, I'd have to say it works ... new to this stuff and almost missed that I had a 'Mention' - thanks to just setting up tweetdeck - that linked me here. So I certainly appreciate learning the ropes... Thanks!

When I saw your mention the first thought I had was about the 140 character limitation... no question it's hard to refer to something and express a thought about it and toss in a link in a short tweet... but using FriendFeed for the extended reference & comment seems like a good way to go ... if I had much to say...not alot - yet. ;o)

I've been using twitter mainly to learn about how all this tech & connectivity is being used and experimented with ...especially related to radio... but this stuff is taking on a life o fits own .. now I'm going to have to figure out how to weave FriendFeed into already overwhelmed world.

Krish · 4 months ago

This clearly shows you haven't got the Twitter ecosystem yet. People who unfollowed you immediately need not be bots. I am a living person and I use socialtoo to unfollow anyone who unfollows me. It doesn't make me a bot. Your argument doesn't hold.

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

Anyone who uses that kind of feature is an idiot. By the way, that is the VERY DEFINITION OF A BOT. You are not in control of your own following behavior. That is mighty lame. Anyone who just follows people to get followed back is, sorry, lame.

Krish · 4 months ago

Dude, just take a moment and think who was lame. You used a stupid script and followed every tom and harry and got royally screwed. Now you unfollow everyone to get over the mess you created for yourself. Without even trying to understand what I am saying, you are calling names like idiot and lame. I just use social too to unfollow people who unfollow me. I don't use it to follow people. I only follow people whom I consider to be worthy of following except, maybe, you. Just take a moment and think who is a bigger idiot here. Don't throw up shit without even trying to understand what the other person is saying.

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

I totally understand what you're saying. And, I was doing autofollowing so more people could interact with me via DM's. You, on the other hand, are saying that the only people who you'll follow are those who will follow back. That, dude, is lame. Sorry, it is. Very lame. And I don't even care if you follow me. By the way, about 30% of the people I choose to follow don't follow back. If I decided not to listen to them because of that it would be MY LOSS not theirs!

Facebook User · 4 months ago

I do feel like I need to interject a point from the sidelines. I don't think it's either being an idiot or lame to auto-unfollow people because they stop following you. I don't do anything auto, but I can see why people would. And given my focus on reciprocity in these networks, it's one of my personal hand-crafted criteria. For someone who chooses auto tools for *their* needs (I never have. They don't interest me at all), if reciprocity is a criteria, I see this as a perfectly valid use that is neither idiotic nor lame. We can't use our criteria to judge other's uses IMHO. I know I've been guilty of that more than once.

Lance M. Brown · 4 months ago

To me, the "reciprocity standard" is just a guaranteed way to create an unreadable stream. And it basically indicates that those who use it aren't really reading or paying any particular attention to most folks they are supposedly "following". In other words, they could give a crap what I'm saying, they're just allowing themselves to be listed on my tally, as long as I let them list me on their tally.

For someone at my level (I'm following--genuinely following--about 800 people), so-called reciprocity is really an unfair arrangement. Tweeps who are fake-following 10's of thousands of people get to add me to their tally without actually having to read me, but I who am actually reading my stream have to see all their tweets in order to follow them back.

Why people want thousands of followers who aren't actually listening to them is a little hard to grasp for me.

Viloria.net · 4 months ago

Wait... how can SocialToo unfollow people who SocialToo did not follow on your behalf? You mentioned that you do not use SocialToo to follow people, and the SocialToo unfollow preferences page states that: "only works for followers SocialToo has followed on your behalf."

Jesse Stay · 4 months ago

Viloria, what you mention is for if you want to unfollow the people not following you back, another service we offer. To unfollow everyone, regardless, we can do for you as well. Also, for a $5 (just one-time) fee we'll even unfollow those *not* following you back that we haven't followed on your behalf. So all of it is possible depending on which options you enable.

philipbarrett · 4 months ago

As with yourself, I travel extensively, however when I'm working from home I have an old Dell laptop perched on the edge of my desk running TweetDeck & Firefox under Ubuntu. This saves me from having to shift windows around to check tweets on my primary work MBP.

A very cheap (actually free, the Dell was an abandoned lease machine) way to keep in touch without distracting from the work in hand.

Johni Fisher · 4 months ago

ga ga the frog is here
:-)) great post Robert ,I 100% agree with you

kevinmontgomery · 4 months ago

Very smart thing to do. I may do the same soon.......if just to have the aut0-unfollowers unfollow me! Take care, and thanks for the insight.

Eber Irigoyen · 4 months ago

wow, you're finally "getting" social networks

cheeky_geeky · 4 months ago

Yes, it only took Scoble nearly three years on Twitter to figure this out. The rest of us have so much catching up to do. Let's see, step one, don't try to follow 100,000 channels at once. Two, logically follow accounts that say useful things, go it. Three, people I meet, I might be more likely to follow...okay, cool. Four...

christian · 4 months ago

If you didn't follow me I know that I can always call you on your cell phone if I REALLY need to get a hold of you :)

Facebook User · 4 months ago

I'm really glad to see this Robert. I've always said that when you give in to the power of raw numbers, and there truly is power there, you sacrifice the signal-to-noise ratio. The quality of engagement suffers, and that's very hard to measure because QoE is quite different when it's a facet of a relationship that crosses multiple services. I'm happy to see you doing taking what I think is the wise approach. Kudos!

sherylbreuker · 4 months ago

You said: which I also did — until Monday my Twitter account would automatically follow you back if you followed me, that was great because everyone could DM me, but it brought me a TON of spam that made DM’s unusable and forced this change

Whoa! I can't believe someone finally GOT it! I hear so many people complain, massively complain about how they get DM spam, or how they can't see all theeir friends tweets, or how they don't have the ability to answer everyone in their list. Well I've got news for people, I've been saying it a long time...even to you - I have not ONE time gotten a spam DM. I have absolutely NO trouble replying to people who talk to me, and I can keep track of everyone I follow because I keep my numbers small, don't arbitrarily follow everyone who follows me, and I do not get spammed.

It never ceases to amaze me that people have the audacity to complain when simple common sense can tell you the answer. And the above statements by people I DO CARE ABOUT, say to me somewhere something is missing because even you figured out you can't pay as much attention to 100000 ppl as you can to 1000. What kind of friends are they to you, how do they matter to you if you don't have time for them? Isn't that a relationship standard? To pay attention and spend time on each other?

Good for you, Robert. :) Go forth and prosper, but don't make your following list so big you forget who matters. :)

Martin Lindeskog · 4 months ago

Good for you. What's your take on Twitter's follow limit rule? I am following 2,416 at the moment and 2,192 Twitter users are following me. I can't follow new individuals at the moment due to the follow limit rule, so I have to unfollow people in order to be able to follow more users again.

aaronstrout · 4 months ago

Scoble - great recommendation on adding your "favorites" from Twitter to Friendfeed. I'm going to set that up and start favoriting more tweets starting tomorrow.

-Aaron

David Damore · 4 months ago

Would love to hear more about how number 11 works out. That is a killer idea, but usually too time intensive to do for more than a handful of people per opportunity.

Is there an automated way to do this or do people need to include their Twitter ID on their business card to make it easy?

Steve Chou · 4 months ago

I am kind of serious of Twitter following when I use Twitter more and more these days, I used to follow around 1000 people,now I'm following below 400 people.Follow some people simply because of mutual follow politeness doesn't make any sense at all. I'm tired of people talking nosense all day on Twitter.We should follow people who can add value not just make tons of noise,not even if you followed me.

JeffreyJDavis · 4 months ago

Good Post and glad you got it manageable.

I've never followed that many people and probably never will. Using Friendfeed and Tweetdeck, I can stay on top of about 2000 folks, but I think that's my saturation limit.

Any portfolio (stocks, product lines, followers) needs occasional pruning and rebalancing. The Scorched Earth approach is one way to go at it, kind of "Zero Based Budgeting " approach. From 160,000 to zero in one script run. Nice.


According to http://isfollow.com/ I'm still on the torched list. I'm sure you will end up with a portfolio of people to follow that makes sense to you, and that's what matters.

Best

@jeffreyjdavis
President & COO, AGY
www.jeffreyjdavis.com

Apolinaras Sinkevicius · 4 months ago

I never got engaged in auto-follow games. Maybe it is just the business operations person in me, always pragmatic and value-focused. I got done with popularity contest in high-school (yes, I probably failed there).

Every person I follow I have either met in person or their tweets are a must read for someone in my field. I also have my rules of no profile, no picture, no link to your site - no follow. I find it important to provide value to every person I follow, therefore I am very stingy with my capacity and available Twitter time.

martin_english · 4 months ago

is this an idea who's time has come ? I recently turned off auto follow and have started paring back my following as well, and as you said neither of us are alone on this. The spam and plain rubbish comiung throug were annoying...

BTW, regardless of whether you follow me back or not, i'll keep following you - not just for you, but for who you follow and the conversations that ensue. Just listening in on these conversations makes me a smarter person.Twitter

pruett · 4 months ago

It's funny, there was a point when Twitter was awesome (in the very beginning)...then I tried "gaming it" and ended up shitting on my Twitter feed. The notion of following who follows you, and returning the favor, is good in theory I guess, but it eventually leads to noisy chaos.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to starting fresh again, giving Twitter a second chance, through a massive purging of followers. I've found one thing to be particularly true -- odds are the people I get the most out of following aren't going to follow me back. Quite frankly, I'm fine that.

andrewbaron · 4 months ago

Robert, what was the method you used to unfollow that many people? Manually by hand would take too long and it seems like the Twitter API would prevent that many calls, etc.

Suggestions?

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

Andrew: I used a script from http://www.socialtoo.com -- it costs money ($20) but it's worth it if you want to do this yourself.

app · 4 months ago

You could also use tircd + xchat, then write yourself a perl script to automatically kick anyone that talks. In about a day or 2 the list should be small enough to unfollow the rest manually.

John McCrea · 4 months ago

Robert, great post, and so glad you're altering course in this direction. Totally makes sense to me.

Alan Mairson · 4 months ago

Intriguing move, Robert.
Two quick questions:
1. If you hadn't descended into DM hell w/ all the spam, would you have still taken this step?
2. Of the 100,000+ people you were following, how many made it onto your actual reading list? Was 1,600 your max *before* The Big Unfollow? Or were you able to absorb a lot more?
Thanks.

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

Alan: the thing is during the past 18 months I've moved almost all of my reading behavior over to FriendFeed so I let things get worse than I otherwise would have let them get. I'm able to absorb a lot more, but really I've noticed that the best twitterers settle on fewer than 2,000. We'll see how many more I get.

Alan Mairson · 3 months ago

Belated thanks for your reply, Robert.

pxlated · 4 months ago

Glad to see you blogging - Hope you do more of it.

christinelu · 4 months ago

[[hugs]] for being one of your 1600 but yea...i unfollowed everyone back in february when you and loic first had the debate. had 14 hours on a plane to shanghai to think about it. by the time i landed, i asked loic for the secret script and <zap> my spam stopped. isn't it nice?

Hallicious · 4 months ago

Been thinking about this for some time myself, Robert. Is there an other than manual way to re-follow the people you want to follow?

Steve Rio · 4 months ago

I really like your list of requirements to vet "Followable" folks! I might have to pass it along to some clients.. it paints a pretty good picture about how to get value from Twitter!

thanks
Steve Rio

Kitty San · 4 months ago

Good move! Social media has fragmented our work day more so than ever! Wise use, wise choice of what you listen and share what you have to say to people who cares or can use it is far more meaningful! Twitter can waste time or to create value..Choice is ours!

davepeck · 4 months ago

Excellent post and I like your thinking. I think you have gone a great road. Way to hard to follow everyone. Quality for the win!!

the Jim Gaudet · 4 months ago

Well I am happy to say you didn't unfollow me. Wait, that means you were never following me. :(.. lol jk

I really don't expect you to follow me, well not now anyway. I am following you, and have been for a while, because what you say is interesting to me. You are in a field that interests me. You are close to the people making the new internet and I want to know about it before it is here. That is why I "listen" to you.

I doubt you would be interested in my current projects and for that I don't expect you to listen to me. That is perfect. That is how it should be. When I get on the 'net, I use it for ME. I am empowering myself with knowledge, the element needed to survive and be successful. I have to get that knowledge and I feel that this real time web (twitter, friendfeed, etc..) is the answer.

Number 10 reads you are checking our last 20 posts about a current project. EXACTLY. This is happening now. This is you talking about Evernote when it was in beta and not a PR6. I was listening then, I see it now. Again, this is why I follow you.

People need to stop caring about how many people are following them, seriously. It doesn't matter. Use the Internet to enhance yourself in whatever it is that you love to do. That is why it is there. When you have embraced this concept, you will notice that the things you want (success, happiness) are right there in front of you.

lauras · 4 months ago

What you say makes sense. I've had a hard enough time with a fraction of people I'm following. And while on some level I've been exposed to more stuff out there as a result, the signal-to-noise ratio has definitely diminished.

I'm changing my ways. The Tweetlater service is now 86'd. I had signed up ages ago because I was having trouble finding time to follow people back, but it got ridiculous. I've spent a few minutes every morning just unfollowing spammers (and blocking several who don't take the hint). Auto-follow-back and auto-unfollow became Nomad running amok.

It was Tweetlater who unfollowed you. Not a deliberate choice. I'm following you again after I post this comment.

I don't think I'll clean house wholesale. But will continue organically unfollowing the crufters and following those I find interesting and it'll sort itself out.

(While you're in Boulder, drop by and say hello! We're upstairs from Techstars - that's new since we chatted at sxsw.)

Kevin Tomlinson · 4 months ago

Incredible. I have been wanting to do this. Too much. Too much Thanks for a guide.

jrsmithers · 4 months ago

I agree with you, I need to go through my own twitter account and clean up mine up some.

Bob DeMarco · 4 months ago

Robert, I have to give you credit. You have more angles than a trapazoid (trapezoid, too).

Very entertaining. You must have been vaccinated with red bull.

Thanks...

hardaway · 4 months ago

I am one of those people who has been unfollowing people. I'm down to about 1800, and I know almost all of them. I have a goal of pruning to 1500. And I don't have spam anymore either. BuppythePuppy, who follows only other dogs and several good friends who are dog lovers, is by far my best experience on Twitter, however. That's where I see my friend Karoli, for example. And one of the reasons I want to follow fewer people is that I almost missed the fact that @queenofspain was sick and in the hospital, and I love her.

Hameedullah Khan · 4 months ago

Glad that you are now getting a value out of twitter, I assume this decision came out of the @secretscoble experiment! The list of requirements for a person to qualify as "followable" is really understandable.

ursula · 4 months ago

How many hours/days did that take?

I probably only need to weed out about 500. Maybe this weekend! :-)

kosso · 4 months ago

I'm astounded you lasted that long on Twitter following so many.

When I now get a new follower who I see is following a gazillion, twillion people, I usually don't bother following them back, as they clearly dont really care what I have to say either.

Following too many people just reduces the value of Twitter imho.

And far too many people just seem to care about the numbers. As I overheard somewhere (can't remember where) this week : "you don't judge the quality of a chilli by counting the beans" :)

Welcome back Robert ;)

Kelly Adams · 4 months ago

I don't see Robert really calling his change "leadership". On the other hand, his "purge" is really nothing more than undoing a problem he caused himself. Congratulations on doing something that was obvious to me from when I first joined twitter.

I only follow people that really interest me. If someone follows me "unannounced", I check out what they have to say and, if it really interests me, I add them. But for the most part, I only follow people I go looking for to begin with.

I actually went through my list of followers today and started blocking ones that were obviously nothing more than shill accounts. I suppose that is probably "poor etiquette" on my part, but I don't particularly want followers who aren't even people.

cc · 4 months ago

All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again...

10. Hot social networking site of the moment.
20. Cue in Scoble. I will win. I will have the mostest bestest coolest friends. So there.
30. Oh dear me. Oh dear dear me. This is impossible.
40. But wait, I can manage it. I will teach others how.
50. I am so over this. It sucks. They didn't meet my eternally insatiable needs.
60. Goto 10

Right about 35 now...

mattsingley · 4 months ago

Seems like everything either thinks this is a great move, or a stupid move. I think it's neither, just a personal choice. However, I did choose to auto unfollow you, but not because I'm padding numbers. I think of it more as going to cocktails parties or tech events...I could choose to continuously hang out with the same people over and over and over again, but it's unlikely that I would meet new and interesting folks. I like following new people, and although I don't auto-follow those who follow me (I do try to manually refollow) I do auto-unfollow. Nothing worse than listening to somebody talk all day long who doesn't listen to a thing you say.

Anyway Robert, great move for you, but a personal move. I'm still going about following everybody back, but maybe if/when I hit 100k I'll feel differently. Cheers.

Alisha Wright · 4 months ago

The thing I like about what you did is that now if I want to follow your twitter feed via rss or whatever method - I can, and there isn't feed from 100K people =) so not only is it cleaner for u - but for your followers as well. In your case, I don't think you are being unsociable at all - because you are just the opposite - you engage with people whether you follow them or not. The big brands that just tweet sales messages and never follow or reply to anyone I think are missing out on a lot!

imjustagoyle · 4 months ago

"you engage with people whether you follow them or not"

Yeah, right. /sarcasm

I haven't found that to be the case with Scoble - in fact I've found quite the opposite. However, one thing I will say about him is that he sure knows how to stir up a crowd.

markwebster · 4 months ago

Social media and networking is based on mutual respect, i follow everyone who deigns to show an interest in my output, that's based on the principle of basic courtesy and mutual respect, qualities that are rapidly dying out amongst certain social media users!

noxi · 4 months ago

"elitist"...relief 2 c ur not turning into "that guy" as some of ur comments during ur unfollow, rather than the actual unfollow, were a bit harsh. Those who hadn't seen ur vid wouldn't know that u qualified it with the "lame 2 u". Everyone deserves an enjoyable twitter experience. Those that don't leave their accounts dormant or leave Twitter all together.

Brands...power 4 me less so. I'm about learning + having fun..Links + haha factor more than I met so + so. I'm still at the beginning so it's probably understandable. Autofollows r a problem as it means that many spam accounts are, due to follower lists, regarded as legitimate b/c ppl don't administer their accounts/block when they chose the autofollow route. It's a difficult one b/c without the autofollow by some I probably wouldn't b here. However, by unfollowing the bots ur probably saving us from the spam as well as yourself.

I find autounfollowing silly, but must admit to unfollowing a lot of ppl that reduce their accounts drastically without explanation. Y .. b/c I then see some scrambling for follows as their accounts take a massive hit. I'm watching 2 at mo and it's a tragic sight. Unfortunately the huge selection of analytics tools have made Twitter for some a game rather than a learning/connecting experience. I'm taking a week or 2 or more of at mo and seeing my follower list plummet. People move around in Twitter. Bots ...a problem? Not really...

Paul Papadimitriou · 4 months ago

Robert, I think you're call is wise. Following people is an nice gesture of recognition but diluting that gesture into a flood of followers only reduces its value.
With its wider adoption, Twitter has become a content-centric tool -as opposed to people-centric- and the advent of RTs has somewhat allowed content to be set free of its originator.
Thus, Twitter acts as a great discovery engine , discussion booster, engagement tool.
Yet, the absence of conversation threading gives it another meaning than Friendfeed in the daily pulse. Again, wise decision Robert. Thanks for sharing.

Brett Nordquist · 4 months ago

About a month ago, I cut back the number of people I follow on Twitter from just over 2000 to under 450. I doubt I'll take it over 500 because Twitter has been a lot more enjoyable since that time. I don't believe I hit any of your follow requirements which is a bit of a bummer.

David Semeria · 4 months ago

Robert, when you lose control of your follows, the feed loses its authority.

The same statement can carry more weight depending on who makes it. If you follow 'anybody' then anybody could have made the statement - but if you have a strict follow criteria then, even if you can't remember why you followed the person making the statement, the follow filter means there's a higher chance this person's opinion will be relevant to you.

simontay78 · 4 months ago

Hey, those auto DM ppl are lame...I don't usually use DM to spam anyone but I do chat plenty but only when I'm free.

If I'm multitasking, I only focus on replies instead of the public tweets (by ppl I following)

Following humans is the key to finding updates & making new conversation to know more new friends

Pesky bots are easy to identify by the following check points (To unfollow & avoid following back)

1. They following too many vs no. of followers (1000 following 2 followers)
2. They don't tweet more then 100 tweets in months
3. They have links in ALL their tweets
4. They auto RT on certain keywords
5. They auto DM you immediately when u follow them.
6. They tweet 6 tweets in 2 seconds
7. They don't have any replies to real tweets.

When following back, choose wisely before following

I do hope that helps Cheers!

Paulone · 4 months ago

I have never followed more than 30 or so people on twitter the stream just becomes chaotic. Although I jump into the stream for searches and trending topics. I actually have more followers than people I follow although many of my followers are of dubious distinction. None of my family is on twitter and few of my friends so twitter to me is my way of staying up to date on trending tech news and topics of interest to me. Although I follow some very substantive twitterers I dont mind the occasional "What I am having for lunch via Twitpic" post either.

johnbermudez · 4 months ago

You sound so full of yourself, its unbelievable...

You state the obvious (following less than 100 000 people of course better), and don't consider that some of the people that actually unfollowed you because you sound like a jerk thinking that he is Twitter's God. I am one of the ones that unfollowed you, and no, I am not a bot !

Jos Schuurmans · 4 months ago

From: 'I just decided to follow all my followers on Twitter'
(http://www.josschuurmans.com/2009/07/i-just-dec...)

[UPDATE, August 6, 2009: We can now also call this the trade-off between the visions of Robert Scoble, who just dumped 104,000 followers, and Marshall Kirkpatrick, who is "(...) a big believer in oversubscibing and then creating groups based on priority and context (...)"

I agree with Marshall; I think it's okay to dip into the river of news when the urge arises - while accepting that we can't read everything. BTW, he seems to have developed pretty sophisticated methods to be alerted when the tastiest fish swim by.

At the same time I must grant to Robert that most of us don't get the same amount of spam he does.]

marthaawade · 4 months ago

Great post! I am doing the same thing. Although on a much smaller scale (I have 4,000) - so its good to hear it from a top tweeter such as yourself. Well done.

Marty (@wadecreate)

ianbetteridge · 4 months ago

It's very tempting to say "I told you so"... so I will :)

ninjamonk · 4 months ago

I have been doing this manually and am dropping a couple 100 a week. I only followed 1300.

I also unfollowed people if they only used twitterfeed to post, there are so many of these.

Also if you have I am a social media expert/guru in your profile or twitter background image then you get unfollowed.

Mainly I want to follow users that live near me and are into the same things that I am.

The peace and love times of refollowing are over...

xaml · 4 months ago

1. First you're wasting time on Twitter, Facebook, and all the other socio-pathic garbage,
2. then you realise that you dug-up way deep into the social (spider) net (work)...
3. ...only to celebrate your return with a taste of elitism (smart, powerful people eating sandwiches).
Congratulations, Mr. Scoble! NOT!

Kyle Mitchell · 4 months ago

Something's hanging me up here. I fail to see why this move is being extolled for its virtue.

It took years for you to accept the obvious concept that autofollowing is a bad idea and leads to a horrible mess of a stream. It took me about 20 minutes, with thousands and thousands fewer on the list to figure that out.

Hey, good show for doing it, and the reasoning is quite sound. Hope you get better use of the service now. Just don't think anyone should be calling you a "thought leader" (no offense to the guy who said that) or giving you a pat on the back for finally using Twitter in a way that works best for you. That's what you were supposed to be doing in the first place.

Johan Lont · 4 months ago

I use Twitter for entertainment and I'm addicted to it. I follow approximately 40 people, because I wouldn't be able to keep up with many more. I have great awe for people who are able to follow 5 or 10 times that number. And you, who follow 40x the number I follow, are simply incredible.

John Robb · 4 months ago

I changed my following behaviour a few weeks ago to focus on local tweeps. I once posted a picture of a local traffic jam that received more attention than I thought it would. That experience got me thinking that the local component to twitter needs to be explored/expanded. I don't think I need to follow any more Twitter "experts" that will teach me how to grow my follower list. I don't want to grow the list arbitrarily I want to grow it with people that can get some value from my tweets.

sigheti · 4 months ago

I'm one of the first people to heavily use Twitter in Romania, and before long, I ran into the same problem. Ok, on a MUCH LOWER scale. Gave it a little thought, unfollowed lots of people all of a sudden and there it was: a better, usable twitter account. It seems like every once in a while a cleanup is necessary, but that's okay.

Could you explain very briefly what do you use to take your favourites to Friendfeed discussions?

WizardOfWishaw · 4 months ago

omg

bastyen · 4 months ago

If you are a guy who are doing something in life, people will follow you to knowd what you are doing and for what you share and think.

If people stops to follow you because you stop to follow them, then it means that they don't care of you or that they are spammer. Is your ego good enough to accept a loss of few thousand spammmer ?

I make difference between twetter and facebook. In facebook i have friends and people i want to keep in touch with their life, their photo and other private things. In twitter i follow people that i am interested in what they do, their project and what they think, and what they share, and their news. I almost have not the same friend on the both website.

Ruth Mott · 4 months ago

Brilliant! and I'm going to do the same - s00n, very soon.

Ruth Mott
Mott Coaching

mattbowman · 4 months ago

Robert, I got a good video of your Q and A with Aneesh Chopra up here on Vator:
http://vator.tv/news/show/2009-08-05-cto-of-the...

Cheers/M

Digital Revolution · 4 months ago

I can't say I blame you. I follow people who might be interested in the BBC Digital Revolution open source documentary project with similar quality controls as you (common interest, someone who may have web history / knowledge to share), but still I've found a few days later I'm being told how much $$$ I can make with one tweet, one follow, one down-payment of my soul... Annoying to be duped.

Most annoyingly, in deleting and marking as spam via Tweetdeck, a lag resulted in me accidentally blocking and spam-labelling a very valuable follower! I have re-followed and alerted them to the mistake, but has my spam mark mistake damaged the account of that person? Can I rectify this?

Good luck with the new discipline.

~danb

Dalka · 4 months ago

Hi Robert,

This is one of the most brilliant things you've ever done! Period. How did you even do it? That must've took forever.

You've exposed several flaws in Twitter's overall growth story (and VC's startup funding practices):
1. Twitter has never had a data or revenue model that made sense, it should technically never have been funded in it's current state
2. They have not controlled their API and/or bots on their network, at Barcamp Chicago in July I gave a controversial talk where I asserted that controlling the API access would lead to a higher quality environment on Twitter. Your little experiment just proved my theory in spades, I can't thank you enough.
3. Why is Twitter reluctant to control the API's and bot programs? It will hurt their alleged grwoth story and therefor e their valuation and cashflow. If the VC's had done the hard work and homework they would have found what you found. But silicon valley is tied to a love affair with user growth as a primary "success" metric. This is not sufficient and is in fact harmful. I'd love to work directly with VC's on building success metrics that are more meaningful for their startups, it would lead to better use of their capital and less email and other spam across the net completely.

Again - this is the most brilliant thing you ever did. You've exposed so many things that need reform in startups and funding in general with this simple action and I can't wait for the follow on discussions. I only wish I had more time to blog about this today in more detail - I likely don't.

Anthony Farrior · 4 months ago

Technology is progress. Be it a left turn or a right, we will always readjust as we learn more and correct our mistakes. Not that you were making mistakes, you believed your plan was good for you "I'm following a gazzilion people and loving it(my version of you)!"
So now you want to purge and rebuild, great! You know you have plenty of people ready to give you support in finding the "clean signal". Just keep helping us get through the interwebs too :D

Chris Brogan · 4 months ago

Love it. Truly. Great post and wonderful perspective.

imjustagoyle · 4 months ago

I think @sethsimonds beat you to the punch on your "unfollow" parade. This isn't a new tactic, nor is it "brilliant" as some people claim. You are after all, just a man. A man well followed - but a man just the same. Good luck with your decision - there's a lot of us you weren't listening to anyway.

thor0322 · 4 months ago

Great post. Insightful and 100% accurate...as usual. I'm going to consider this approach for my own Twitter life...

liza · 4 months ago

so, like, do i have bragging rights because you're still following me :)

it's funny because i've always hand-picked who to follow and some people called me out as elitist but, you know what? I DO SPEAK TO PEOPLE THROUGH TWITTER. i use it as a public IM, an insta-rant platform and a stand-up performance tool.

so welcome to the "hand-picked twitter followers" club.

btw: does anybody know why @twitter is dead?

frank barry · 4 months ago

Interesting Robert. I can imagine it's a huge move in helping Spam go down.

I'm pretty particular about who i follow. Here is my sort of thought through way i follow people:
1) people i can learn from
2) people talking about or sharing things that interest me
3) people that give back
4) friends from real life

http://twitter.com/franswaa

Mark Essel · 4 months ago

Bold move. How and when you choose to follow someone is a groovy option we have in social media. I've learned some of the basics from watching you in action Robert and have enjoyed many of your videos (looks fun interviewing startups).

I'm on the fence with twitter, I realize I get more utility out of friendfeed because of lists I've made but I'm not ready to wipe the slate clean with twitter just yet. I enjoy pruning one follower at a time and manually following back folks with interesting feeds (takes time).

stevegarfield · 4 months ago

Hi Robert,

You wrote, "Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve done a good old fashioned blog." You mean, "Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve done a good old fashioned blog post."

Right?

http://building43.com is open? I need to go check that out.

Saw this on friendfeed, BTW.

--Steve

hankwrites · 4 months ago

The spam is getting a little tiresome on Twitter. I have been working on unfollowing the dead wood.

niico100 · 4 months ago

Couldnt you achieve the same with TweetDeck groups or similar?

Arjan · 4 months ago

Smart move. I'm not that long on Twitter, and never got even past the 300 followers, but that might be also because I took this approach right from the start. And that is why I really like the thing. It brings me a lot of value. And yes, if people follow me, for me that is a trigger to evaluate their tweets and consider a follow-back. Out of courtesy. But some of them just have no value to me, nor would I add value to them for sticking my nose in their discussions. So, good for you to get the value back, but as someone else already indicated: why did it take you so long? ;-)

Dayngr · 4 months ago

I'm with you. I started unfollowing tons as well. Somewhere along the way the conversations were lost. I love talking to the folks I follow and learning about what they're doing and sharing that with others if I find it useful. I'm tired of experts and gurus and coaches selling eBooks.

Paisano® · 4 months ago

Excellent analysis and experiment. Most of us can't even imagine what it would be like to try to follow over 100K on twitter. I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity but there's a strange dilemma that happens naturally on social networks...the more you increase the quality of your work (tweets, blog posts, videos, etc.) the more your network grows and thus the catch 22. It's a nice problem to have, Robert. Still, I guess it's a good thing that we have the option to do a social reboot (twitter bankruptcy) and start all over again at ground zero. The lesson learned is that we should handpick whom we follow or add to our network from the beginning. That's what I do and so glad I never used an auto follow back script.

Thanks for doing this and sharing your experience with us. Also thanks for following me again. You were the first person I ever followed on twitter (thanks to http://dcortesi.com/tools/my-first-follow/) and I remember how thrilled I was that Scoble followed me back. This time, it feels even more special because I know it wasn't a script and that you made the decision to do so this time.

Codytalks · 4 months ago

This is great that you are now preaching this Robert... but a year ago.. you were preaching "its not how many followers you have its how many followings". you were defending this act of following 106,000. No kidding the spam is dead is you quit following everyone, why would you do that in the first place? If everyone just used integrity with the follow button, spam on twitter would have no hold at all.

As much as i usually respect your opinion, following 106,000 and launching your follower numbers and then unfollowing them sure seems like a ploy... doesn't it?

i seriously am not being a dick... but this change of heart with you and other "Early Adopters" sure seems strange.

Caddilac Williams · 4 months ago

I realize the irony of the following statement...I read this article and am taking the time to comment on it. But here goes:

Get a life, loser. While you were reading tweets about nonsense I was closing deals, calling clients and generally living a kick ass life offline.

Jacek Becela · 4 months ago

auto-following is plain stupid in the first place. why the hell do it? it has absolutely no purpose, no meaning, for me it's almost rude because it shows you treat every bot and spammer as same as normal people who care about what you have to say.

btw. even following 1600 would be too much for me ;)

Codytalks · 4 months ago

Amen!!

michaelkneissler · 4 months ago

WTF is so stupid to follow 106.000 people (one-zero-six-zero-zero-zero)? And WHY? I follow around 150 for prof. reasons & that's more than enough.

Monica O'Brien · 4 months ago

I can't really blame you. I followed people back until I was following 3600 people. It gave me a huge headache. I quit following people back and my list continued to grow to about 6500 followers.

I unfollowed everyone and hand-followed a few people back (150 or so). I lost about 1000 followers who were auto-unfollowing. People follow me now, but with the knowledge that they aren't getting followed back automatically.

This is how Twitter should be used, IMO.

k4sac · 4 months ago

Robert,

I use a multi-pronged approach to who I follow in FF, Twitter or Facebook. 1) Are the people local to me I interface on a daily basis. They may/may not be noisy but I try to keep up with them 2) People like you, who I consider have a high signal to noise ratio and follow for useful information. I realize that with hundreds of thousands of followers, you may not follow me and that's ok. That doesn't make your input any less valuable to me (of course I may not be able to interact with you)
3) People that are in my professional field 4) People in my hobby field.

I can't even imagine what it is like to be someone like you that has thousands of followers, I am sure your S/N is a lot higher.

Scott Milener · 4 months ago

Wow. Way too complicated. if this set of rules is rewuired to use social media, it will fail.

grantcriddle · 4 months ago

Hi Robert, I've followed your rants, raves and musings off and on for about a year now, and have always enjoyed them. I don't always agree with your points of view but you get me thinking, and that's the point for me. So much content is either straight up spam or drop dead boring vanilla these days! Yours' rarely is, and I appreciate that. Interesting twitter plan, I'm curious to see how that evolves for you. Cheers!

Adam Boettiger · 4 months ago

Good for you, Robert! You're validating what I discovered as well - that it's quality, not quantity that matters. And also that as your following count (those whom you follow) increases, your attention per person followed decreases. I solved the problem a different way though.

Like the old days of radio, I have a transmitter and a receiver, instead of a transceiver. @AdamBoettiger is my transmitter and I Tweet to that account but do not pay attention to the stream. @Boettiger is my receiver and I do not post to it. I follow maybe 150 people and the content stream is as you say 100% pure. This works wonderfully for me. Thanks for sharing your strategy, Robert!

cliquekaila · 4 months ago

Really like the post, good points to integrate into your social media campaigns. I practice similar efforts on my profile and my client's profiles, but when building a profile I find it hard to be as picky and choosy.

Tonks · 4 months ago

I'm not the kind of person you'd want to follow, based on your description above, largely because I don't really follow anyone who talks only about technical stuff. I don't really care. Twitter, for me, is far more personal--a collection of friends who share their personal lives, talk about the mundane, and actually INTERACT with each other. I'm a writer, editor and technical project manager, but I was also a marriage & family therapist at one point, and the social interactions, the simple content of the inanity of our lives is what I find most fascinating. Twitter is to me a great social experiment, a place to learn about what makes people tick, but also a place for a work-at-home-alone-most-the-time person to be with other humans. We share our music tastes, computer failures, politics, weather...you name it. And we like it that way.

So, I follow people who provide original content. If they have 20 RTs with no comments, or if they blather on about the same technical stuff over and over, I'm not interested. If they ask questions, engage with people, have fun with them, then I'll give them a try. Never know who you might find out there. After awhile, if we're not talking or you're spamming or you're a political flame thrower, I say bye-bye.

What I resent, however, is the assumption (or self-righteous accusation) that the intimate details of one's life are somehow beneath you or anyone else. People go to social media, Twitter especially, for a multitude of personal reasons--whether for politics, technical support & info, or just a chance to talk to another human being--it's their reason, and it's just as valid as any other reason.

I say to those who belittle others on Twitter for any reason other than their own: get off your high-horse. Some of us actually enjoy each other's company, even when it means hearing they just ate a peanut butter sandwich, cuz you know, maybe I did too because I had to finish a project during dinner, and through that we discover we both work on the same kinds of projects, which leads to a joint project. Work is boring. It's the people you work WITH that make it interesting.

Scott Milener · 4 months ago

I agree on everything here. I've stopped going to my Twitter account because it became the noise stream that many people realized is not valuable. Just haven't taken the time to unfollow. And, I only follow 2K people, but many are spammers.

Danny Brown · 4 months ago

Only took you two-and-a-half years to figure out auto-following just makes you ripe for spam and is pretty unsocial to begin with?

stevenmhall · 4 months ago

I'm curious. How long will it take before you'll have to unfollow on FF? Isn't it inevitable to some degree?

Keith Barrett · 4 months ago

First; let me say you have suck timing. You caught me just as I was actively participating in a Twitter meme, so I hope you saw beyond that. :-)

I view "following" the same way I look at project management or building the foundation of a house. The 1 minute you put in now checking whether a follower (or their followers) should be followed yourself will save you hours later. Who you follow defines the service experience for yourself, and should be the people you find personally informative or entertaining.

cwilsonk · 4 months ago

The 411 on why one of your followers uses Twitter, follows you and doesn't care if you follow her:

I don't care how many followers I have on Twitter. I got over caring about how popular I was in high school. I don't use Twitter to market myself or update followers on what I ate for dinner. I find the first cheesy and the second silly. I use Twitter as a great tool for learning. I am a curious educator, mom, volunteer, citizen and voter. I read tweets to learn more about issues that make me better/smarter in all of those areas.

I follow you because someone I followed re-tweeted you. I don't expect you to follow me because I don't have anything to offer you in the areas you most frequently tweet.

I signed up for Tweeter long ago because I read Ev's blog but I only started tweeting a couple of months ago when I figured out how much I could learn from smart people like Mitch Kapor, Tim O-Reilly, Craig Newmark, Alfie Kohn and others who share my interests in learning, technology, social justice, better government and parenting.

Most of my tweets are re-tweets. I screen all of my followers and block anyone who invites me to view their free pictures, is trumpeting their skill as a "social media guru", or is selling anything. I make a few exceptions when, after reviewing their tweet stream, I see that a follower has interests similar to mine, lives in SF or is innocuous.

I am a news junkie and Twitter has changed the way I consume news. I used to visit my favorite blogs several times a day, then I used Google Reader. My iPhone now makes it easier to use twitter to see when my favorite bloggers have a new post.

Facebook is for friends. Twitter is for learning.

Not sure how FriendFeed would benefit me and I have not made time to check it out.
That's about it. Thanks for the tweets. Look forward to more blogs.

PTZ · 4 months ago

Your opinion is that Twitter is not for friends, but learning. However, to view Twitter in only one dimension is myopic. Twitter is more flexible than you suggest and its value is relative. To suggest that Twitter is only for learning is like saying your computer is only for homework; there is much more you can do with it. I think the folks at Twitter would agree, regardless of their original intentions, that Twitter is multi-functional.

It is my opinion that those who mostly RT offer nothing to Twitter. If I ran around the world quoting others, what real value would I add to it? I feel you should reconsider your role in Twitter and offer some unique and original perspectives, thus adding quality.

cwilsonk · 4 months ago

Actually I did not say that I believe the only purpose of twitter is learning. I said that is my use. That is a very different viewpoint. Obviously twitter has many possible uses.

When I retweet information, usually urls, that my followers would not otherwise see I am offering them value. If I don't offer them value they can unfollow me. Most of my followers are educators or parents of young children who have very little interest in technology or open government so my retweets can open their world to areas where they have little exposure.

The beauty of twitter is that people like you, who think I have nothing to offer, don't have to be bothered by me, nor I you.

I am 51, very few of my friends tweet so my experience may differ from yours based on age.

Alexis Martin Neely · 4 months ago

You've made mass unfollowing socially acceptable. I did a mass unfollow a few weeks ago and it's been great for all the reasons you've written about. I love Twitter again! I did end up losing about 1/3 of my 30,000+ followers. But, I supposed they aren't people that mattered.

xaml · 3 months ago

@Alexis Martin Neely: "You've made mass unfollowing socially acceptable", "I suppose they aren't people that mattered". See, I think you're an idiot. So in the digital world, individuals don't matter? That would be in contrast to Scoble, quote "I only follow important people". Fucking dumbsack! The arrogance of what is falsely labeled "social network" couldn't in fact be less selfish. "Social" is not "society", even if your fucking lead bloggers keep on pushing it.

T.Marie Hilton · 4 months ago

I guess I've just never been a numbers kind of girl. It's taken me close to two years to get around 1,300 followers and to be following a little under that. That's probably why all of these "I"m unfollowing everyone" tweets caused me to raise a carefully plucked eyebrow. Now I understand.
I never could make sense of auto-following when Twitter was a personal interaction tool. Kind of hard to personally interact with a million followers.

Tom_Nocera · 4 months ago

If this new path you've been led to by Loic can be summed up as your quality of followers wins out over quantity of followers, then, Robert, I am with you.

Otir · 4 months ago

Loic is always right. Well, most of the times when he is not wrong. :-) But then he admits it which is very nice.

Jayna · 4 months ago

I'm curious - what do you do that allows you to actively follow 1,600 people? I love Twitter and we probably follow a lot of the same people. I follow about 250 and can't keep on top of everything going on with them. I usually cut my losses on the info and only dig back into posts if there are a few conversations that are really interesting and I need to see the back story to get the full effect. I follow more people everyday, so I would love some insights on how you keep on top of their comment streams!

I do love this post and the logic in it is spot on. Personally, I won't do the same things in some cases, but I can understand why they work for you.

Cheers!

Michael Odza · 4 months ago

I feel so much better now, to know I was mechanically removed as one of 100,000 rather than hand-picked to be removed...But yes, I am very choosy (on a scale a few orders of magnitude smaller), looking for links that are new and useful, as resources in themselves or as models of success (I'm still waiting for a good set of failure links from which to learn). But there's still too much volume, too much noise, so I try to stop worrying about what I'm missing and depend on something Esther Dyson once told me, when she was publishing Release 1.o and advising me on my technology newsletter: "You just have to have faith that the cream will rise to the top."

Helzerman · 4 months ago

My follow policy on Twitter is simple. I follow anyone I find entertaining and interesting -and what I define as entertaining and interesting changes all the time, because my life changes. For me, Twitter is entertainment and, while there are some folks I like talking back and forth with, I never have the expectation that anyone will follow me back. I also do not presume that others use Twitter for the same reasons I do.

When I left IBM Microelectronics, for example, some chip focused people, who were not "real life" friends, but were interested in semi, stopped following me. I was not insulted. Why would I be? They wanted IBM chip info and I was no longer providing it. Period. I don't even care if my friends follow me. Not all my friends like Twitter, and some, just follow news sites. If you're following CNN, Time and Fox, only, I do not suggest adding Helzerman for news, even if we're buds.

That said... if others do want to use Twitter as a popularity contest / self-esteem boost / what have you, that's their right too. Like I said, use it how you want it.

Rich_Weaver · 4 months ago

"I un-followed your mother last night Tribek!" @TheRealSeanConnery

Mark Essel · 4 months ago

Robert, I've been doing some more thinking about your mass unfollowing. And I believe you made a classic mistake, you chose the simpler solution, but not the better one. First off I'm positive you chucked out the baby with the bathwater to find a few pearls. You also lost some very important information, WHO NOT TO FOLLOW!

I humbly submit that you should have demanded better social aggregation filters from twitter. As long as they are going to be the sacred real time pipeline holders they had better damn well give access to a business like Zemanta to help cluster every status ever submitted. It would be in their best interest as a value provider of information, and in the users best interest to find relevant and valuable unknown info.

You just chopped sweet Serendipity off at the kneecaps.

By the way I'm working on a solution to your rationale for spring cleaning.

Dawn · 4 months ago

I certainly don't have a huge following (pun intended) either on Twitter or WP, but the spam is awful. I only follow people or groups I personally care about, and as my following is not large, I also check out each new follower. If their Twitter pages is loaded with garbage 'buy this!' , 'check her out', get rich quick, etc., I block them. I don't autofollow because I don't have time to spend catching up with all the tweets. How to you keep track of over 1000 Twitters anyway?

lonesbones · 4 months ago

You are SUCH a dork.

sachxn · 4 months ago

good for you not for me..

NextWidgets · 4 months ago

didn't you used to believe that it's best to follow as many people as possible ? plus i can't imagine anyone over 1000 followers actually tracking conversation through the normal twitter stream - at that point it all just becomes subscribing to keyword search terms anyway - it's the only way to stay on top of topics one is interested in.

Loic Lemeur · 4 months ago

I was convinced it was just a question of time :-) glad you made that choice!

robe1221 · 4 months ago

I don't have the problem with too many, well too many compared to your pre-dump, followers...but I can't imagine what it would be like. I have about 80 now and there is alot of chatter coming across. Some of it I will unfollow soon unless they start posting something human and less robotic.

Thanks for the great article!

nancyclaeys · 4 months ago

Following, unfollowing -- I basically just don't care anymore.

Initially, Twitter was about reaching out and actually communicating with a few people you wanted to get to know on a more personal basis. Having 100 reciprocal followers was not all that uncommon.

Then the "follow everyone, " wave went through because some of the Twitter upper crust proclaimed it the way to be an unselfish Renaissance man/woman of the people. The masses quickly adopted this philosophy.

Three months or so later, the backlash ensued and the "unfollow all, re-follow a few" became en vogue (again.) Truth is, Jim Connolly and Ari Herzog did this a few months back. Many people, including myself, did it before they did.. we just didn't publicize it. Didn't think it was necessary.

This is not a new concept, but some would like all of us to think they recently invented it. Common sense is not a recent phenomenon. It's just that it isn't exercised much in social media circles.

Batman · 4 months ago

Fascinating. You do of course understand this changes everything. I'll let you figure out why... :)

Digital Mofo · 4 months ago

I couldn't agree more with you Robert. And i am following you because for my interest you're "followable".
The way you share your consolidate findings is a benefit for me, at the same time it reflects exactly your thesis.
But i see another point behind this follower thingy... if you have more followers than CNN for instance you're an institution, that's where money comes in, some sponsors might not be very delighted if someone has taken the next step of actually using effectively social medias, while from an economical point of view it could be questioned if it was the right move... i know some have 2 profiles, one for personal benefits with hand picked contributors and another one, aiming for as much followers as possible (ego or money ....), however, i beleave such statements as you made, will increase the value of your "brand", since we all know quality comes over quantity. Cheers

rblevin · 4 months ago

I have long told friends and clients to focus on the quality, not quantity, of their Twitter network. This post will help me drive that home. It's a powerful statement when the guy with one of the largest numbers of followers has a small enough ego to whack them down to size, and emphasize the quality of the communications/interactions and relationships. Thanks, Robert.

williambaobean · 4 months ago

the volume of chatter went down for me when China blocked Twitter and Facebook - everyone without VPNs ceased to exist online

gwong · 4 months ago

So glad that we are on the same page now. ;)
My rules are much more simplistic:
"Quality over Quantity"

I don't get much noise at all on Twitter as I only follow limited no. of people & my feed is private. and I mostly do what you do but thanks for verbalising it, brilliant. thanks.

Ashame that you unfollowed me though. ;-)


BR
@GarethWong

EricFriedman · 4 months ago

Definitely makes sense. I follow a large amount of folks so that I can jump into a different conversation stream at any time. Yes, I lose the value of being able to catch up with anyone, but I gain the ability to see different conversations outside of my typical social group that I will see anyways.

Leif Stenlund · 4 months ago

You are one of the 32 people I follow. I follow you because I think you have some interesting thoughts about things that interest me.

I am very restrictive about who I follow. I've never autofollowed back, but I understand that it has been seen as polite to follow someone back if they follow you. But, frankly, I don't give a d**n. I can't understand why someone would like to follow me, unless they kind of, you know, actually KNOW me.

I follow people I know, people I like and people I'd like to know. And people that talk about things that interest me.

I can't be following too many people, I'm a readaholic, I have to read texts when I see them. It's pretty annoying, reading the same text on the back of the toothpaste tube for the millionth time every time I brush my teeth... If I followed more people I'd never get anything done. It's bad enough, already.

fredcastaneda · 4 months ago

Dear Robert,
You and I met at the Podcast & Portable Media Expo in 2006 (you were just hired by PodTech at that time--yes, time flies!). Great days in the beginning of the podosphere.

I just wanted to let you know that I myself had cleaned up my twitter following (both inbound and outbound), and I am committed to putting the SOCIAL back into SOCIAL MEDIA. I have chosen to limit my numbers and follow only 125 people at this time (those with whom I do have a PERSONAL CONNECTION and with whom I have a relationship where we can OFFER EACH OTHER VALUE--that's right, no bots or squeeze pages or sales pages or pitches). I have limited myself to almost 300 followers, and I am sure that most of them know of me from my network or other recommendations from people with whom I have a personal dialogue.
I, too, was tired of the way spam had entered the twittersphere. Before I tweet, I ask myself this question: "If I am a recipient of this tweet, will I find it of some value or will it be annoying and frustrate me?" That is my criterion BEFORE creating and sending a tweet.

It's good to know that a million followers equates to the million eyeballs that buzz by a roadside billboard at a high-speed Interstate--just numbers and a waste of resource only to be part of a popularity contest.
My time is too valuable to be wasted by popularity contests or telemarketers or "twitter-marketers"--and so I respect the time of whom I follow, so that they will respect my time. Quality tweets take more time and are more difficult to publish, but then, isn't a quality blog, as well?

Thanks for your post, and I am sure others will find it of value--especially those who have also cleaned house in the twittersphere.

Sincerely,
Fred Castaneda, aka The Struggling Entrepreneur

Herschel · 4 months ago

Robert,
I'm still hanging in with you on your blog. You got so lost with Friendfeed and Twitter in that by following you on FF and Twitter I got so much noise from your world so I had to disengage.

You do well to find new stuff, but I think you are like a child in a test-it-before you buy it toy store. Being on the bleeding edge you tend to overwhelm us slower folks.

You see, in my humble opinion I think you should slow down your video posts and post only the very best of what you see. You should then only post on the blog the very, very best of your experiences.

I think you got so lost with your audience and media that your message suffers. I long for the good ole days when you were at Microsoft. Your message was so tight and focused.

If anything, with your reputation, you should get a few other technology-finders, hire them, and have them cover sectors of the technology world with you. To be honest, all the technology sector is way to big for one man.

Hopefully you'll read this and find something of value as I've found your information in the past valuable.

Herschel

DJc · 4 months ago

Hate to rain on this love parade, but wouldn't an new 'inbox' account have achieved the same purpose without insulting 100,000 followers?

Tens of thousands entice people with a follow, then drop them - to make themselves look popular. I call them pho-celebs. Did you do the same?

I think you need to apologize to the nice fans at Twitter.

Maree · 4 months ago

Why on earth would you follow 106,000 people?

garydale · 4 months ago

I agree totally with what you said about the Twitter account being focused and not just some "fun guy" but at the same time if you look at who I follow you would think I am unfocused. Why? Because I use Twitter for work and also for information on the various things I am interested in. For instance, I follow lots of different people because I have very different interests. I like Arkansas Razorback and Arkansas State Red Wolf sports as well as Esperanto, the New Orleans Saints, rugby and history. I also follow people and news outlets who live in places that I used to live like Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Seattle, etc. And I follow people in all aspects of the book publishing industry for business purposes. So going by your above criteria you might not follow me.

simran · 4 months ago

worth also following some #topics i believe... that way, even if a person is not on your list (say they tweet about various stuff, including their lunch, but also happen to be a very smart #security guru), when they tweet about #twitter-hack, you won't miss it :)

mattsmillion · 4 months ago

I see your point but I wasnt one of the lucky people to be followed back...lol
twiter.com/mattsmillion

Jennifer Jones · 4 months ago

Robert, I think you make a lot of sense. I too have cut my followers recently and your strategy works as far as I am concerned.

Guest · 4 months ago

It's August, shouldn't you be talking about 2011?

JustinBartz · 4 months ago

This is a great approach you're taking to minimizing the "clutter" on Twitter. Fortunately, it's one that I thought about and planned before getting to that level. On any social networking website, many people (to increase their "reach" or their "marketability") want as many "friends" or "followers" as they can get, especially on Twitter. After Ashton Kutcher and CNN had a contest to see who would get the most followers, I think that's when marketers realized they must do the same, even though it's the wrong way of thinking. I don't follow anybody that I actually don't CARE about. This doesn't mean that I have to be friends with them, but it means that they have to have something relevant about them that I care about. This could be their short profile, or their recent Tweets, but it has to be there. Some companies like "following" somebody in return for a "follow" back, but why do that either? I don't want you to "follow" me if nothing I have to say is something you are interested in reading.

minou30 · 4 months ago

Twitter recently started to suspend accounts that bulk unfollow. How were you able to do this without having your accounts suspended?

Scobleizer · 4 months ago

I just ran SocialToo. I didn't even know that unfollowing everyone is against the rules.

Jesse Stay · 4 months ago

minou, I think Twitter has made it clear that they are referring to the process of quickly following and unfollowing people in rapid succession. They said on the developers list that bulk unfollowing is perfectly acceptable. If accounts are getting suspended it's not because of this.

Bernard · 4 months ago

I delete people who show up too many times a day regardless of content. I can only digest so much of this stuff...

David Spark · 4 months ago

Hey Robert, I was actually always amazed that anyone could follow more than 1000 people. How do you do it? And then when I talked to those people I realized that they didn't really follow all those people, they were just being polite by following them back, which I don't think is necessary. In many cases, those people who had a crazy high following account just had a search on their own name and were only reading tweets that were talking about them.

I'm now at the point where I feel I need to follow more people because I feel my friends tweets are getting really stale. :)

BTW, I think you might be interested in this post I wrote, "My personal Twitter policy. What's yours?" http://snurl.com/plnh4

Jeffrey Paul · 4 months ago

I've been going through and thinning out my following list as well, relatively painful but totally worth it to get a better spam-free twitter conversation.

siosism · 4 months ago

Great stuff! I think these sort of things happen when young, online applications - or should I say their users - reach their next level of maturity. I'll probably end up doing the same soon enough!

James · 4 months ago

You are SO not worth reading. *unsubscribe*.

slippylane · 4 months ago

Nobody unfollows or blocks The Bloggess. Except you, and William Shatner.

suzyinhollywood · 4 months ago

I'm smart. Apparently smarter than you. I don't twitter and thus don't waste time thinking about such menial and ridiculous items like unfollowing a person eating peanut butter sandwiches.

iget2work · 4 months ago

Thanks for pointing me to this 'article'! I see your thought process.

To answer your questions above:
I'm choosing to follow everyone back except porn stuff. (No, I'm not a prude but don't really want it w/my morning coffee! hehe) Twitter gives me a sense of what's happening with all kinds of people, including the annoying ones who tweet about forex and making a zillion dollars by giving them 39.95! I like to see the ratio of BS to gold. I use tweetdeck (thanks to one of your videos) to let the stream flow by. The handful of people I actually know, I have sorted out for special viewing. Twitter, so far, is not too noisy for me. What i DO like, is an occasional deeper conversation (which you said on a panel somewhere!) ... which i can get either via e mail or, be-still my heart, the old-fashioned phone! My approach re: Twitter is the same now as it was when I started. I suppose if the flow went by so fast, I might change my mind, but I think there is a feature in tweetdeck where you can slow down the update of 'all friends' so you can actually read a thing or two.

What I like is an occasional surprise ... like when I think a tweeter is boring and then all of a sudden they throw something out that amuses me or interests me. I have a site devoted to 'work' http://www.iget2work.com but I tweet all kinds of things because I pitch tv shows, work with foster kids and RT things I like in the world. Thus, I have a large number of followers devoted to jobsearch but i also have followers that are entrepreneurs, IT geeks, moms, dog lovers and comedy peeps cuz of my bg in comedy shows. I find it invigorating to meet people I'd NEVER probably meet in real life and Twitter has helped a few people find my site who seem to be thankful for what we're doing.

Your videos have helped me understand a lot and you were the one I looked to in the beginning for answers. So thanks for that and keep up the amazing work you do!

Best to you, Robert.
Sue

HanhDBrown · 4 months ago

I agree! I am going to take your advice .. it is about the quality not the quantity. Too much noise is allot of clutter in life which is a huge distraction. I'd bet you are more productive with your time and whom you really care to know about"what is going on"