Totally disagree. Don't make the mistake of saying "Twitter is for..." based on your own narrow use of it. That's how YOU use Twitter - and, to my mind, it's as dumb as using Google Trends to talk about "what's going on on the web". I follow less than 300 people, the vast majority of which I've met face-to-face at least once. I don't auto-follow. The Twitters I get tend to be funny, personal, and occasionally touching. In other words, it's very much NOT a marketing tool - which appears to be all you're treating it as. - Ian Betteridge

http://www.kyte.tv/ch... has a video that shows how I read tweets and use friendfeed too. It is close to what Louis says in his blog post. - Robert Scoble

Ian, I expect disagreement. I am explaining my viewpoint. It is a platform, and it has some strong characteristics and some weak. But notice how you're answering me here, where there is room for discussion. I'm not picking a fight but suggesting why I can see both views from Loic and Robert. - Louis Gray

I'm answering you here, Louis, because I don't follow you on Twitter - and Friendfeed, at its heart, is discussion medium. Twitter never has been, and was never intended to be - hence its small character limits, lack of threading, and so on. I think both you and Robert are guilty of having in the past hyped up Twitter to be something it was never built to be - hence your ultimate (to my mind) disappointing use of it. - Ian Betteridge

Ian, depending on the day, I get called a Twitter hater or fanboy. That's all part of being visible. In terms of hyping Twitter, I think I am fairly low on that scale. Most would instead suggest I hype FriendFeed, but I tend to promote services I think bring value - and there is a long list. - Louis Gray

Larry, so help me with the following issue. Loic is getting pilloried for reducing the people he follows and having a big disparity between those he follows and those that follow him. Is he snobby for doing that, or do people have artificial expectations on him? I've found it's best to just get connected wherever people want - be it Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or LinkedIn. - Louis Gray

Interesting perspective, but not the way I use Twitter. It's pretty cool that there are so many different ways it CAN be used, though. - Jill Walker Rettberg

And Jill, also interesting, as your feed is private on FriendFeed, we may never know if you are the person I would like to engage with. I am thinking you may be, but there's no clue. Why do you prefer a locked feed? - Louis Gray

I absolutely agree, but the question is: Twitter doesn't allow you to follow topics, it's a semantic web feature. This is why such things as hashtags and twitter search allow you to pull our an RSS feed. Should this be a feature for Twitter? So you can directly follow a word or using something like word sense disambiguation follow a subject. - Daniel W. Crompton

Ah - most of my feeds are open (@jilltxt, http://jilltxt.net) but I'm still finding my footing with FriendFeed. I like for ME that I can see all my various "selves" online together, but I'm not sure I want them all connected for everyone else. I like being able to have one space to talk about professional/web geek stuff and other spaces to share photos of my baby or discuss parenting a preteen and so on... - Jill Walker Rettberg

Sounds good, Jill. Again - each person uses the services differently. My post suggests what I've found. And when I'm logged into the work account I do read as many tweets as I can and follow a smaller (200 or so) amount. - Louis Gray

OK, I made it public. I suppose I'm not really experiencing FriendFeed so long as I keep it locked, eh? Can I ask you though: you seem to follow even more people on FriendFeed than on Twitter. Isn't that almost as impossible to track in any meaningful way? Or do you just use the best of day etc to skim stuff other people like? - Jill Walker Rettberg

Louis, to answer your question about why Loic's getting pilloried: I think that's partly the (unfair?) expectation when you're a high-profile figure that a a follow means a follow back. But the problem is that, unless you're constantly reading Twitter, more than a few hundred followers is impossible to coherently follow. At that point, it's *only* useful in the way you describe - but the answer to that is to follow less people. - Ian Betteridge

Just to be clear, though: there's no "one true way" to use Twitter. What I was objecting to about your post isn't your use-case, but the way you phrased it: "Twitter is for...", not "I use Twitter for...". Your headline sounds like an edict, not a suggestion. But hey - that will get more traffic ;) - Ian Betteridge

Ian: or the other choice is to follow everyone on Twitter, and use search to find people you want to listen to and use friendfeed lists to follow JUST those people you want to listen to. There's a variety of ways to handle this problem other than the way Loic decided to handle it. I get a lot of value out of having a lot of geeks and early adopters aimed at my TweetDeck. - Robert Scoble

But Robert, in doing that you're really creating a false expectation in people who follow you. You're following them - which is a positive action which creates the expectation that someone is listening. If you subvert that by not *actually* bothering to follow what they say, using tools to "find people you want to listen to", what's the point in following them? Loic is just being honest about the fact that he can't actually follow everyone who follows him. - Ian Betteridge

And it's interesting you bring up FriendFeed. I follow lots of people on FF who I don't follow on Twitter, for exactly the reasons you like FF: it's *really* conversational, it lets you manage more groups, etc. But it's not "Twitter vs FF" - it's "use Twitter for what works on Twitter, use FF for what works on FF" - Ian Betteridge

And FURTHERMORE... Go to bed! Its 2am where you are, mate! :) - Ian Betteridge

It's just how one uses it, my use of Twitter varies over time, i use it for marketing, listening to others, enjoying what others have to say or share.. From my point I don't think you can ever limit Twitter's scope, or Friend Feed as well - Sardar Mohkim Khan

i can t totally agree with that. There people/brands i really want to track in any single update they publish. - Ouriel Ohayon

Whats wrong with people? - Ben Watson from twhirl

Of course there will be lots of opinions here. I agree on some of your topics since from your point of view everything makes sense. Not everyone here is to find useful info as I said on Rob Diana's site the other day. There are a lot of people just having fun with friends and that is cool too. 140 is too small for that, true. Not reading all tweets, true. FB and FF better to express ideas and communicate, true. But following a person you care is possible. And topics are created by real people. - Carlos Lorenzo

As people can use LinkedIn to find a partner(!), they can use twitter for following others! But we suggest them to use suitable tools for their jobs - farzaam

Right now I don't know anymore what Twitter is becoming. Too much info mixed with too much spam. Either someone figures a way to get it organized (by topics, for instance, or by tweet-popularity) or it's gonna die of success. Maybe the key is to drop the "Follow" option: sometimes you follow a guy that makes one good tweet and after that he becomes dull, and sometimes you miss the good stuff just because you didn't follow. How do I know where the best tweets for me are? - Jordi Soler

The thing that has me puzzled is I don't really see Twitter as a company moving in a direction that makes me think they'll be the ones to get it under control. It seems that tools like Tweetdeck, MrTweet, and others that probably don't exist yet will be the ones to follow in the footsteps of Summize and get a handle on things. How they work that out challenges like Twitters API limits in place will be interesting to watch. - Ken Sheppardson

I also deleted the 20,500 people I followed - but unlike Loic, I ALSO deleted the 23,500 people following me. I totally reset my Twitter account. Loic wanted all those followers - clearly this matters to him a great deal. Personally, I think we should all be free to use Twitter however, we want. - Jim Connolly

Glad to hear others have the same issues with Twitter as I do. Although I don't share the same views as many on the usefullness of twitter (I use it more for listening to a live stream/broadcasting and for close work related team members), I just mentioned to @hlooman yesterday how people pushing the bounderies of applications generate unexpected and sometimes very creative outcomes that often change my view and use of an application. - Phil Ashman from twhirl

Louis - Loic builds Social Networking tools and services. The man follows everyone and one day decides "Oh, I'm changing my ways" then criticizes people who used to use his method. Not classy and i am not a fan of the man or his products. - Mona Nomura

Louis: I think Loic has lost a lot of good will after unfollowing everyone - BUT keeping THEIR follows. - Jim Connolly

Liking for Jim's comment - Loic's a good guy but I know a lot of people mad that he unfollowed them. - Jesse Stay

I'm sure he is a 'good guy' -- don't know him personally, but his methods show no class. - Mona Nomura

@Mona hear, hear! - Jorge Escobar

No class? Le Meur wrote a blog post telling exactly what he was doing, and why. How does one make someone else unfollow? Block? Now that is rude. He was completely transparent and there is no merit in saying this move makes him less classy (or that one doesn't like a product his company builds). - coldbrew

I have no interest in reading rants and namecalling - like what was displayed on Twitter last night. He builds a tool especially FOR Twitter. If he can't manage conversation flow that is a problem. His product should fix it. How am I supposed to have confidence in a product where the creator is complaining? - Mona Nomura

welcome, coldbrew :-) - Jesse Stay

Thanks, Stay :). Mona, I have no idea what ad hominem attacks were occurring on Twitter last night, but I don't see the connection in having confidence in a company's given product, and the class of its founder. Just don't see it. [EDIT: for clarity] - coldbrew

To my understanding, Loic unfollowed people because conversation flow management became an issue. One of his well known products is Twhirl, a Twitter tool. If he can not resolve his own problem, how can a user have confidence that Twhirl will solve MY problems? - Mona Nomura

Agree with that. Still unrelated to Le Meur having "no class", which is quite a serious statement (and uncalled for). - coldbrew

coldbrew - he went on an insult rampage last night on Twitter. Grown men insulting others in public is NOT classy. At all. And to add, he is criticizing other people's methods -- something his product can or SHOULD solve. Which in turn, insults his own product. Is that class? - Mona Nomura

Just looked through Le Meur's Twitter feed and I didn't see anything disrespectful. No ad hominem attacks, nothing to make me think Le Meur has no class. Calling it like he sees it. I think a bunch of people partaking in this discussion have allegiances and other conflicts of interest here. - coldbrew

I'm with Mona. All of this lead me to lose faith in Twhirl so I uninstalled. I also don't appreciate being considered noise or a nuisance so I did people like Loic and Calacanis the favor of removing myself from all of their services. Maybe they'll eventually remember not to insult the people that make it possible for them to not have real jobs. </rant> - Mike Lewis

Loic seems that he wants to stay 'in the news.' Mini dramas and controversies make it easy. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

I've rebooted my Twitter approach. it was getting a little crazy to be broadcasting and only listening to the replies. Now that i've restarted my account i'm planning on keeping to < 1,000 people I'm following. - Jason Calacanis

Rather than self-centric, there is a topic focused Twitter. See http://tv.tEarn.com, http://s.tEarn.com (sports channels), http://ce.tEarn.com (ce products), or http://sw.tEarn.com/. - DJ Chang

All you guys who decided to follow tons of people and then get frustrated about the spam levels... I just don't get it. I am picky about who I follow (anyone not from my city, and not in my fields of interest is nixed EVEN if they follow me) and therefore I get more personal interactions out of twitter. If I want more that is what the public timeline and twitter search are for... in some ways are we learning that facebooks 5000 friend limit might be a smart thing ;) - James Ostheimer

How someone else uses or does use Twitter is up to them, each to their own, its certainly nothing that's going to upset me. Maybe it makes sense for people who have thousands of followers to every once in a while to clear everything out and start again. - Kim Landwehr

dont you all get sick of talking about the same thing? there's about three seperate conversations on the same topic running on FF now.. - Terry O'Fee

O'Fee, obviously not, and neither do you since you are tracking the conversation around FF. - coldbrew

Landwehr, the debate is not about WHETHER one can use Twitter any way they want. It is about what it means to use Twitter in various ways. - coldbrew

i hide the convos and more come! it's like a friggen plague! - Terry O'Fee

You're a better man than I. I could only see so much before I had to chime in from my very unattached position. - coldbrew

it's like people don't have anything interesting to talk about apart from the services themselves. how can this level of SM worship be healthy?? - Terry O'Fee

Terry: It's been like this for the 20+ years I've been on the internet. BBS folks talk about BBS software, Usenet folks talk about usenet software, web forum people talk about web forum software. The tech folks talk about tech stuff, and the "Social Media" people are going to talk about Social Media tools and services. If you don't want to hear those conversations, you need to go follow Lance Armstrong, TheRealShaq, and Britney Spears. Otherwise, you're out of luck. - Ken Sheppardson

...oh, and my quick suggestion would be you unfollow Scoble and JesseStay. Since both those guys make their living building and talking about Social Media tools, guess what... - Ken Sheppardson

here's an idea! talk about yourselves, people. what else do you all do?? whats some other interests you have?? - Terry O'Fee

I like to discuss ideas, not people. And, I don't think anyone is really trying to discuss themselves, just using themselves as an example. - coldbrew

All this is quite interesting really and everyone manages their Twitter and FF how they see fit. I've got my Twitter working nicely after a year of constant pruning, adding etc to find & interact with scientists, Pharma, economists, real life friends & FFs. Not everyone is on FF, many aren't. I happened to be on Twitter when Loics outburst happened. It came across as emotional, not v classy & irritated with us as 'noise' so I unfollowed. - Sally Church

That may be true, Church, and I appreciate that (I bet Le Meur does too). But, anyone that is been online long enough knows that it is difficult to communicate efficiently by text alone. So many senses are cut off (note the wide use of emoticons), it is easy to misjudge what someone says. Especially having never met them in-person. - coldbrew

... of if they're, you know... French. [NTTAWWT] - Ken Sheppardson

That too :) Cultural difference could magnify the issue for sure. - coldbrew

As an Englishwoman I wasn't even going there on the French in case of accusations of continuing the 100 year war emerged :-). But the analogy of JP Rive and the French rugby team getting in a strop did cross my mind at time. - Sally Church

Twitter is for whatever you want it to be. Your 140 characters, eh? - Phil Boiarski

Lots of good comments here. I liked Robert Scoble]s video, on how he use Twitter and manage to auto-follow all these people. Loic might have unfollowed a lot of people, but each have their own choice right. Just because his a social media star doesn´t mean he HAS to use social media in any certain way.... However, as reciprocity, for me, is central to social media, I do disagree with the choice. - Peter Efland