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Terje Fjelde › Comments
Re: The Fourth Day of Mellowmas: Something Warm for Mellowmas - http://popdose.com/...
"The lower you fall, the funnier you are. Probably one of the highlights in the history of Mellowmas in all its depravity. But I think this is his real "push face": http://tinyurl.com/yho2red I have six Jeffrey Osborne albums. And two L.T.D. albums. I'm just sayin'."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Letter from the Editor: Hitting the High Notes with Jack Wagner - http://popdose.com/letter-...
"This is beautiful, Jeff. Jeff Pescetto?"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Revival House: Six Poorly-Reviewed Movies That I Love - http://popdose.com/...
"I saw "Heaven's Gate" for the first time a couple of days ago, and I must agree on both counts. Some of the scenes were so stunningly beautiful and the attention to detail so meticulous that it left me speechless. Of course, it was incredibly flawed at times, but it was still a fascinating watch and I enjoyed it as a kind of stream-of-consciousness-experience -- I even think I would've enjoyed the director's initial 5-hour+ version."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: CD Review: Frank Sinatra, “Classic Sinatra II” - http://popdose.com/...
"An ardent Sinatra fan I take your point about Sinatra "owning" these tunes, nevertheless I feel sorry for almost all other traditional pop singers (not Rod), from Tony Bennett, Mel Tormé and Bobby Darin to Vic Damone, Jack Jones and Michael Bublé, for being unfavorably compared to the master. It seems impossible to sing a tune in this style and not get the F-word thrown in your face at every single turn - I like to call it the Sinatra stigma."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Jesus of Cool: eMusic is Dead! Long Live eMusic! - http://popdose.com/jesus-o...
"I canceled my long-running “Connoisseur” subscription in June. I suppose I'm a bit childish and grumpy when it comes to these things, but I was provoked when they tried to make it sound as if they were doing me a favor by increasing their prices and cutting down on my monthly downloads. If they hadn't tried so hard to make the new deal sound so sweet I wouldn't have canceled my subscription because their prices are still reasonable. But it turns out eMusic would've thrown me out anyway -- as of July 1, the service is "no longer available" in my country. Which is appalling, of course, and it would have been even more appalling if I was still a paying customer. But I'm not. So there, eMusic."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Letter from the Editor: Does This Design Make Us Look Fat? - http://popdose.com/letter-...
"Thanks, Hagen. And thanks, Jeff. I miss me, too. I dig the new layout, though"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Popdose Lost Classics: Jeff Giles, “Hot Nights-Cool Sounds” (2002) - http://popdose.com/...
"Yeah, I heard that, too. I think Bob James was mentioned as one of the producers?"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Popdose Lost Classics: Jeff Giles, “Hot Nights-Cool Sounds” (2002) - http://popdose.com/...
"Well, I love Jeff as a friend, but I’ve always had a bit of a problem with Jeff Giles as an artist. That opinion did not change when I saw him have a mini-meltdown at Lollipopooza when his pre-programmed keyboards wouldn’t work. Seriously, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, and the rest of their ilk have nothing on this guy. Of course, along the way, the guy actually managed to write “Huh?,” which I heartily believe is a fucking great song, but doing so only made me expect more from the guy. If he was capable of that, then why did we keep getting albums that were, by and large, huge steaming piles of inodorous shit?"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Letter from the Editor: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Kind of Like the Fray - http://popdose.com/letter-...
"This is a great article, Jeff. It's so interesting to discuss this stuff on a meta level - the art of rock criticism must surely be a dream case for any sociologist. I've never even heard the Fray (yes, I have a very selective attention range and I don't listen to the radio) and I haven't played the audio clips, but I inserted my own supposedly embarrassing comfort music favorites and the article made perfect sense ("does he ever listen to anything but embarrassing comfort music," they asked, astounded)"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Bottom Feeders: The Ass End of the ’80s, Part 41 - http://popdose.com/...
"Of course it does. It was produced by David Foster. You have some fine-tuned ears there, Jeff."
- Terje Fjelde
"Of course it does. It was produced by David Foster. You have some fine-tuned ears there, Jeff."
- Terje Fjelde
New Twitter movement: unfollow everyone. Discuss why or why not this is a good thing:
Lisa, David, carl morris and 141 other people liked this
@loic started this with a script he had built. He unfollowed everyone yesterday and now only is following 22 people.
- Robert Scoble
@loic told me it feels like he took a bath.
- Robert Scoble
@loic says that having a small number of people he intimately follows lets him build real relationships online again.
- Robert Scoble
i just think people shouldnt take all of this so seriously.
- Terry O'Fee
Is there a way to do this (as in mass deletion option?) Thanks.
- hawk12online
@loic says that if you try to follow thousands of people there's no way to see all the tweets. That is true. If I refresh Twitter.com as fast as I can I can't see all the Tweets coming into my account.
- Robert Scoble
I have been actively unfollowing--not everyone--but anyone that seems not directly relevant or familiar to me on some level. Twitter has become a far richer experience since employing this technique
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
Well how will you will you filter than or get to the things you like? A group of people you follow is in my experience one of the best information filters you can have.
- rick
I'm now following just over 100 people anyway
- VIVANO
there is more than one way to do twitter. both the @loic and @scobleizer way are right.
- Peggy Dolane
Oh, I'm sure it's an annoying mess with about 400 items per minute that mean absolutely nothing to you
- Dorian Muthig
Are you gonna unfollow everyone too, Robert?
- Reuben Thum
i have some really good friends i talk to on a regular basis. some i have conversations with. some proper celebrities because i cant help myself. the rest i suss out. if all they can talk about is ff and twitter, i may unfollow myself.
- Terry O'Fee
@loic and I see that there's something new happening. First, search like http://search.twitter.com is totally changing our inbound. Second, using services like friendfeed lets you group and manage large numbers of followers, so you'll still have the inbound, especially as more and more people join both friendfeed and Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
instead of unfollowing, I use FriendFeed to filter/group the tweeters according to their priority for me
- Alexander Benker
I agree Robert- following folks sometimes can be a total waste of time and waste of twitter. Quality over quantity seems to be the new movement of late and I have to agree fro the most part-I am tired of getting spammed and DMed by spam which we all have to delete. But I have always followed quality- and that is why I am responding to your tweet dude.
- DougFirebaugh
Sure when you have the amount of followers that you do and they will just listen it makes sense. But not for the average user of twitter. It's not about just being followed. I think you may have lost touch with the whole thing. You two are in the top 2%. Twitter is a completely different user experience than the other 98%.
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
So are we calling this Follower Bankruptcy?
- Mike Doeff
This one of the reasons to have track, so you can follow your real friends and still discover new people
- Christian Burns
Robert, Twitter is a river of 140 char messages. Dive in when you feel like taking a bath. Get out when you had enough. Loic and you should stop whining about the drawbacks after you start following thousands of people ;-)
- Alexander van Elsas
let's see robert unfollow everyone in friendfeed too. hah, that'll be the day.
- Terry O'Fee
Reuben: I haven't decided to yet, but @loic sure makes a good case for it.
- Robert Scoble
IMO, it's not a great idea. People will see this as a negative action toward them and unfollow you. If everybody were to unfollow everybody they know, twitter would become a meaningless array of nothingness. "If it ain't broke, don't unfollow it."
- Zerhynn
I have never bought into the mass followers approach and find that I have to find at least 2 or 3 tweets interesting within a page or two, in anybody I would choose to follow. I am interested in connection with people with similar interests and I don't think it makes sense to just build up volume.
- Kirti Vashee
There's certainly a buzz around this, we just talked about it on our podcast tonight. What sucks about unfollowing is losing the news-stream of information you're trying to capture--stuff you may not have notice/found. Maybe Twitter should implement groups, a'la tweetdeck?
- Paul Salzman
Although I do agree that you do not need to follow thousands of people.
- JP Holecka - Jaypiddy
interesting concept - guess that is what I use tweetdeck, friendfeed and socialmedian for to allow me to focus on issues because I carefully selected the people I follow after reviewing their sites I see merit in unfollowing everyone just as I see in using third party apps - it depends on the individuals preferences
- Lionel Spearman
It's both good and bad. For one if your reduce the number of people you follow to a minimalistic amount you can build richer and more vibrant relationships with the select few. The bad however is that your world view is now much smaller than what it would have been. I'm actually thinking about unfollowing a mass of people to get back into a manageable range where I can read all of there tweets and then search for anything else.
- Jimminy
Why is it a new movement when SM gurus start doing it? I follow those that have similar interest or to learn different point of views. I have no goal to have the most followers or the best twitter grade. Twitter is about the relationships you build. Friends are relationships that I have built over years of trust and loyalty.
- Kyle
I would consider it, but I would have trouble shutting out that many. I am following 1000 and being followed by 1500
- Christian Burns
Having just decided to join the follow you movement I think unfollowing everyone is an unfriendly move, why not make a group for the 22 friends you really want to follow:)
- Suzie Cheel
Then there are some who follow then unfollow and follow again. lol.
- Carolyn Chan
One problem with not following everyone: only people you are following can send you direct messages on Twitter. That's one thing that's keeping me from running @loic's script. @loic points out, though, that most of my DM's are now spam. He's right.
- Robert Scoble
I've been speaking about that for a weeks, and applying it, glad it's finally trickling to the a-listers.
- Richard A.
So the question is, when will FF get DMs?
- Christian Burns
you still have email, robert :P
- Terry O'Fee
Not sure I agree. Even with a small "following" I get real nuggets via DMs. Besides - it is rude to mass unfollow :)
- Rob La Gesse
I kind of wish I could limit my follows to 150
- Christian Burns
I have been thinking about this a lot. Recently I blogged about how opening up my Facebook to everyone who wanted to connect was not really resulting in meaningful relationships. We don't have the time to be engaged with that many people. We can put content out and discuss when they respond, but to actually use the medium in the way I used to when I had just a couple friends on there is no longer possible with so many people. Likewise, with Twitter.
- AV Flox
I won't be sad or hurt if @Scobleizer unfollows me. Frankly, not all my tweets are that relevant to the guy. Just so long as he checks his @replies and answers me every blue moon, that still falls in the category of a good relationship on Twitter. @shelisrael has an unfollow/follow as you go motto described on his blog, it makes sense to me.
- Phillip
It was my script. I'm the new guy at seesmic. I wrote it for loic today. if anyone wants it, I've got it. kick this movement into high stream. If you look at the first person in loic's follow list, its me now :-)
- Zac Bowling
But Robert, I thought you couldn't check your DM's? I remember seeing quite a few tweets from you saying "DON'T DM ME - EMAIL ME INSTEAD" etc.
- Brandon LeBlanc
from twhirl
What a load of BS. Do the math.
- Stephen Grant-Jones
Since I run much smaller number that Loic & Robert, my systematic subtractive technique works--if I had thousands of spamming DM--I would run Loic's script.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
Brandon: I tried getting people to not send me DMs. Doesn't work. People were trying to do business with them (and still are). It's probably the single reason why I won't run the script.
- Robert Scoble
I love the spontaneity and surprise of many friends. I would never give it up. I discover things every day that delight me.
- John Kremer
Besides, if I really need to send Scoble a DM I can just call his Cell phone
- Christian Burns
A lot of the conversations that are still happening are interesting but the relationships built are no longer as close as they were when I had only a couple of followers. It's funny that you tweeted about only having 150 followers on Friendfeed and that's more conducive to quality relationships. Isn't 150 the Dunbar number? Loic's movement is worth reflecting on. I've been making use of Tweetdeck again to scale down the groups. It's helped but Loic's solution is seductive.
- AV Flox
This can be very short sighted. A great way to send the message, I don't want your business or money.
- Sylvia Webb
it would almost be a good idea except for one thing - @reply can only be seen by followers. It would be great if this were not the case, and I can see the spam potential if it were, but limiting @reply to followers, if you;re not following anyone, means everyone is in a big room shouting over each other instead of conversing.
- Brian Benz
New craze for newbies to twitter, following a small number of people and filter the rest for useful conversations. Quantity is not quality!
- Carl Plant
People that I follow on Twitter, for the most part, aren't "friends" in any normal sense of the word. Most of them are unaware of my existence. I tend to selectively follow (previewing someone's stream before following) and actively unfollow (usually when I see a page full of "Welcome, @one" and "Welcome, @two" messages).
- Glen Mistletoe
i'm far more suspicious of those following me than i'm concerned about who I follow. I'm always looking to prune my Twitter follows and -- what can I say -- it's hard... lots of people in my twitterfeed tend to add value more often than not!
- Andy Sternberg
Also, does this approach not create a new A-list in a different place?
- Brian Benz
Just goes to prove that Steve Gillmor is always right, eventually you will see it his way :)
- Christian Burns
Do what works for you. If it stops working for you then make a change. I don't think there is any reason for debate here. To each his/her own.
- Katherine Druckman
@Robert it isn't possbile to say to people not to use DM. And if you feel like you should build up such a large crowd you follow or that follow you then accept the consequences. You get value because it lets you be an information hub and provides you overall sex appeal in the tech community. In return you will have to accept that people try to get access to you to get back some of that value for themselves or their products.
- Alexander van Elsas
if it ain't broke. don't fix it. i wouldn't unfollow everyone but i do find myself filtering more. being open and keeping channels 2 way has allowed me to meet some amazing contacts interested in doing business in China. to unfollow people would be to cut off these channels for me. a lot of these contacts are via DM. everyone's got a different way of using twitter.
- Christine Lu
Brian: why? Not sure what you're getting at there.
- Robert Scoble
It's not necessary to see all the tweets. You can use Tweetdeck and other services to make sure you don't miss your favorites. I still love the nuggets I discover -- like this post -- that I would not discover if I stopped following so many people.
- John Kremer
I can make it easy for @loic. Nuke the account and start over following the 22 people.
- Christian Anderson
Am I wrong to say that if you use Twitter search @yourusername you can't see @replies from people NOT following you? I tried it and it seems to work for me.
- Phillip
Christine: it's all broken, it's just that I have gotten used to routing around the fail whales and the stream flowing through Tweetdeck. I "media snack" and just sample from the stream flowing by. It doesn't bother me too much either way. I do find that friendfeed is a far better place and it's great to see more and more people discovering that.
- Robert Scoble
Phillip: bing! Oh, by the way, I'm following everyone on this thread. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Geez, Loic is like the drama queen of the web.
- Orli Yakuel
Christian: actually that's probably what I would do if I was tired of a high-flow account: just start a new account with only a few friends and lock down the followers. Maybe that's the solution for true addicts like me. :-)
- Robert Scoble
Orli: oh, if you can't have some drama what fun is social media? ;-)
- Robert Scoble
I'm unfollowing everyone on twitter and friendfeed who I don't know personally or isn't local. Sorry peeps, Twitter and friendfeed works best like that. Once I get everything clean, feel free to let me know you're still following me and I'll follow back.
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
I have a simple, less radical set of rules: 1) use groups, 2) un-follow anyone who spams you with direct messages and 3) move questions/conversations to friendfeed.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
Robert, stay as you are, please.
- Orli Yakuel
Orli: don't worry, I'll always follow you. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I too use FriendFeed's and TweetDeck's group functions to prioritize the tweets that comes in from my followees.
- Vinko
52 pages, 1025 people I follow on twitter. Each one was added by me for a reason. No auto-follow. First person ever followed was Jason Calacanis over two years agao.
- Christian Burns
My twitter name is @infoliberation. I find that Twitter is short and sweet and Friendfeed is for a much more robust conversation. I love the marriage of the two. I think Friendfeed is helped greatly by Twitter's jumping off point. What else can you say to that?
- Phillip
damn...right when my followership just started taking off. :-(
- Jason Salas
from IM
I agree with Katherine, to each his own. I've got just a wee 2000 followers, but enjoy popping in to respond to whatever random tweet catches my eye or relevant tweets I've found through saved topic searches. Hey, I even got a new client today - so I'm doing just fine with how things are now.
- Cheryl Allin
please people, let's try for tomorrow for a day on this where we dont talk about twitter or friendfeed. there's other stuff to talk about...
- Terry O'Fee
Robert, come on... this is not what I'm worried about. I think that you really know most of your friends, or for at least trying to communicate with people you don't know. With Twitter you get to know new friends & content based on the same taste/interests - to follow only people you know, is like taking two steps back. (and thanks for following me!)
- Orli Yakuel
Not sure why you would need to unfollow everyone to keep track of what your important people tweet. Just form a group of high-profile folks in TweetDeck and it'll do the same thing, plus you can still follow everyone else for when you want to jump in the stream.
- Cory OBrien
i just unfollowed a couple of folks, it's true, we can live without twitter,facebook and friendfeed. How about for lent we give up facebook, twitter and friendfeed?
- Dh'ennis Dömingö
Robert - Limiting followers = limiting DMs and replies and tweets you can see from others - In Loic's example 22 invitees (followers) that get to have a seat at the table while the rest of us can watch the action passively. TO me this would be as exciting as C-Span. :)
- Brian Benz
I cannot fathom following hundreds of people. I was in the 90s a couple of weeks ago so I pruned my list down to 78. Even that seems high but I couldn't go lower. I'm slow to follow folks, on Twitter & FF, because I'd rather follow a small group of folks I've a genuine connection with than a ton of folks I only have a vague sense about. Some folks tell me I'm doing social media wrong but I think that's silly. For me, social media is all about fun so what need have I of 1000s of followers?
- ♥patricia♥
I think everyone will find their own Twitter preferences. I'm following 606 right now. In a week or two I may clean out some of the driftwood - people who've gone silent or have switched to topics that aren't interesting, but then I'll add some new folks to make up for it. I don't catch every Tweet, but the stream keeps running. So long as it's populated with interesting folk, the Tweets that I do catch are more likely to be interesting as well.
- Heidi Cool
Orli: I've decided that @loic is wrong. But he's also right. Twitter, you see, is really broken for interacting with large numbers of people. Friendfeed is much better.
- Robert Scoble
I think Loic let things get out of control. Robert, considering how many followers you have, you seem to be able to manage your account better than anybody. If your truly are looking for a quality experience, you have to decide what works for you. I always thought it was about quality not quantity:-)
- Michael Fidler
@loic I think its cool that you rebooted who you follow
- Christian Burns
On Pownce I used to try to keep track of all posts (and followed fewer people) but Pownce was more indepth. On Twitter one can glean a lot from just a small percentage of what's there.
- Heidi Cool
Robert, with that I agree: FriendFeed is better for long and real conversations.
- Orli Yakuel
I agree groups in tweetdeck help you filter very well without missing some occasional random tweets. keeping up with your @replies is more critical than every single tweet.
- Alistair (alpinefolk)
Robert - you should unfollow everyone and see what happens. make sure that script stores everyone you are following in a db in case you want to re-follow after the test.
- Gerard
While I didn't unfollow everyone, I cut out a lot of who I was following. Might be rude, but it's not meant to be that way. i no longer have the time to follow so many people.
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
Gerard: it would cause too many messages to fly around. People get their feelings hurt if someone unfollows them.
- Robert Scoble
If I unfollow people, then I'd be digitally talking to myself. I can do that IRL
-
My feelings wouldn't be hurt - I'd doubt if I'd even realize it - that's not what I'm using Twitter for - just silly to me.
- Cheryl Allin
Outsanity: that's not true. Who you are following is your inbound. You can get inbound other places, like http://search.twitter.com or http://www.twittervision.com
- Robert Scoble
Twitter is what you want it to be. That's one of the fascinating things. My own view of it has changed a dozen times since I started. Everyone has their own philosophy about how to use it, and they are all valid. As for me, I'm simply not going to follow anybody who doesn't follow me, and I will follow anybody (as long as they are real) I just unfollowed loic. The World is flat. Will I miss out? Perhaps, but if I want to know what the 'important' people are thinking I can just go to their sites.
- Stephen Pickering
Robert: You're currently "following" 69,188 people on Twitter. If one of those people has their feelings hurt because you unfollow them and they no longer have 1/70,000th of your attention, they have a screw loose.
- Ken Sheppardson
Twhirl gives you inbound with saved searches, each search a tab stream. I love it. Create a saved search for keyword 'RT' and see what's hot or a saved search like 'chrisbrogan' and follow him and all who @ him.
- Cheryl Allin
I say bite the bullet, clear things out, add some searches in Tweetdeck or one of the "track" services, and follow people manually as your real relationships warrant. You can alway run a script to just follow everybody later if you miss the noise.
- Ken Sheppardson
Robert: I unfollowed according to three criteria 1. Does the person follow more than a thousand 2. Does the person respond 3. does the person tweet links and RT rather than content, the fourth is whether you're unlucky enough to tweet when I'm in unfollow mode. Result: A more social timeline.
- Richard A.
Sounds like Loic needs to fix Twhirl to manage his followers better. He doesn't have to pay attention to every single one, but he does need a way to build relationships with those he wants to. Twhirl is horrible at this.
- Jesse Stay
@Richard Azia: I couldn't have agreed with you more on your criteria.
- Reuben Thum
@Jesse Stay, I use twhirl and it's fine for what I do, but that's because I culled my follow list removing all those that aren't active conversationalists.
- Richard A.
Reuben, My timeline is far more fun now as a result :-). Took a few experiments to find the right method though.
- Richard A.
@Richard Azia: I did the same thing like you did, too. Instead of auto following people blindly, I use an auto follow app, but manually unfollow spammers and users based on similar criteria you've mentioned.
- Reuben Thum
At a certain point if you had autofollow on you have no choice but to start over because a) you can follow the number of tweets and b) you will stress the Twitter servers out.
- Jason Calacanis
Reuben. I don't use auto follow, For me to follow someone new I want to see how converstional they are first. That's when I might consider them on twitter.
- Richard A.
Robert: Is this the flip side of what Jason and Michael were taking you to task on a few weeks back on GG? Is it time to do more meaningful *listening*?
- Ken Sheppardson
Robert: I 'think' I was the first person with over 20k followers to do this. Though in my case, I totally reset my account - zero following / zero followers. http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2009... it has been a universally great experience to me and massively increased the value of Twitter to me.
- Jim Connolly
Ken: yes, I think this has a big part to do with addiction too. You keep trying to follow more and more until you snap.
- Robert Scoble
An interesting idea, as I have found I have followers but a very select few who actually respond regularly, I wonder if it is matter of depersonalization, losing what it once represented as a means to an end. Certainly it could be a good idea, but many of those who I have found were those who had spoke on something of interest in the wide swath of sea that is twitter. So I will consider it, but am not sure if there will be follow through anytime soon. Though I guess it would depend also on how effective.
- Raymond Marr aka Knatchwa
As someone has probably already pointed out in a more eloquent fashion, Loic's company makes a Twitter client. Surely he should build tools into that client to make the overload problem more manageable and certainly not try to set a trend of "hey it's cool to unfollow lots of people now". That sort of sends the wrong message to people about your company and it's thinking.
- Pete Gilbert
I don’t see how this is even an idea to be considered. If we unfollow everybody and everybody else unfollows the rest, then Twitter will become a very lonely place. Boring place with no use what so ever… I strongly disagree with this.
- Spyros Papaspyropoulos
agreed @peter, it's nonsense, companywise, to promote that kind of message when you try to spread your twitter tool.Anyway, I think it's more a trend problem, the 2009 fashion is to unfollow everyone and @loic cannot do unfashioned thing because this is how he builds his reputation and his company notoriety.Dommage...
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
from twhirl
There is no point being on twitter if your purpose is to broadcast. For broadcasting blogs and other platforms are more interesting. If you take dialogue away from twitter you undermine the most active members of the community because they will feel people are using the site too passively. Why do you think social networks fail, lack of involvment. At least by reducing the number of people you follow you increase engagement on a per person basis. It becomes personal once more.
- Richard A.
It's beginning to feel like the @1938media technique--in reverse--sans personality shift. Loic will now certainly be the topic of many blog posts in the next day or two.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
Spyros: totally wrong. We'd still be here at friendfeed and http://search.twitter.com would still show us other people.
- Robert Scoble
@Robert and what is the criteria to detect people in such a huge stream? Come on, this is a network thing: you follow someone because someone else you share interest with has followed him, much more than picking up in twitter "all" stream...
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
from twhirl
Jean: I am very adept at scrolling through a huge list of names and telling you something about most of them. Friendfeed is where I spend most of my time, though.
- Robert Scoble
GREAT idea Loic, way to prove your software really can't handle the numbers. This is a weird move from a very smart man.
- Jim Connolly
Understand, Robert, but I think that setting up filters (like you did) is a better way than unfollowing people, which seems to be a "2009 trend" with no real reason, even more when you promote a twitter tool.You barely say "my tool suck, so I can't do anything but unfollow you'.Bad move, IMO.
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
from twhirl
I think Loic displayed a certain degree of immaturity in handling twitter as a tool. It is as overdone to follow everyone as it is to unfollow radically. Inspired by the debate, I felt a bit like Moses today ( ;-) ), and subsequently assembled bloggi's Ten Commandments of Twitter: http://bit.ly/ten-commandments
- Mark Jacobs
Jean: agreed. I like friendfeed as an answer a lot more. Just open up a list and put the people you want to really follow in there and keep everyone else out.
- Robert Scoble
If everybody unfollows everybody else then there is no twitter
- Mark Fletcher
@yann I'm also french and I don't understand too.
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
from twhirl
As Twitter's user numbers have INCREASED it's usability (to me) has DECREASED. Is it just me?
- Jim Connolly
I can understand Loic's reasons, but I don't agree with it. I don't personally know 95% of the people I follow on twitter. It is however neither relevant nor important for that to be a pre-requisite to starting an interesting conversation. I don't auto follow people and i only pay attention to whoever I want to irrespective of the number of people i am subscribed to. Moreover, a large number of people have occasional sparks of interestingness. So if one can learn to ignore; the more the better.
- Parth Awasthi
@Jim_Connolly It is the old law of decreasing returns when new media trivialize. But usually, I am pretty untouched by it since (having been around since February 2007 in twitter) I only follow some 350 people to this day. So I get a good result from my circle of followees. Also, I try to give by helping out new twitter users who have questions.
- Mark Jacobs
@Scoble have you unfollowed everyone?
- Waldemar Schott
@Parth_Awasthi I think, lioc created a big mess by first auto following, and now seeing no other way out than to unfollow. Somehow, it makes me giggle a bit :-)
- Mark Jacobs
You guys have way too much free time on your hands with this nonsense.
- Wayne Schulz
Too much drama. It's funny how many social networks bemoan lack of users and with Twitter, the opposite problem is the subject of complaints - "there's too many bots and DMs! oh my!" Bleh.
- Eric Gonzalez
I really don't share opinion about Loic putting this on a personal way. This is a strategy mistake (company-wise), a trend mistake (2009-ish fashion)...But not a big head problem. Loic had thousands reasons to have a huge head issue before and did not, so I don't see why it would be the case now
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
from twhirl
Robert Scoble: What about the people that are using only Twitter? What about the ones that don't use FriendFeed? Ok, we might be crazy having many many accounts on most of all social platforms, but other only use one or two. By unfollowing everyone, there is no Twitter as Mark Fletcher said.
- Spyros Papaspyropoulos
I'd agree with someone earlier Loic wants to keep his followers but follow less bet he wouldn't have started that policy at the beginning otherwise he would have a few k followers at most! If he had real balls then he would delete his account like @jimconnolly did and start fresh but he wont as he still wants to 'use' the big following he has, talk about one way!
- roger byrne
don't have to start unfollowing anyone as i didn't start following everyone in the first place.. never really understood the auto-following of twitterers i started following.. you've got twittersearch to find people with common interests..
- Johannan Edelman
@scobleizer @loic So much as issues matter, people also matter. Unfollowing people because there is an alternative way to search for issues or interests is limiting the scope to generate them in the first place. Following more people signals belongingness and interests or issues heard. On the other hand, small followings signals selfishness and is the same as 'greed is good'.
- Moses Kpetigo
Interesting: so would @loic also encourage all his followers to stop following him? so he could stick with his few twitter fellows? If I remember, he was the one all about numbers and authority. It seems like, once you've reached enough, you're safe ppl will follow you no matter what, you have good "authority" and then you can unfollow all the mass and become a Twitter snob? It sounds too much like a strategy to me. In which he succeed, no doubt. Will he lose credibility? I wonder.
- May
I like Robert's snack analogy: I consider Twitter as a news source roughly tuned to my general interests via who I decided to follow. In this respect I could follow lots of people, since it makes sure that each time I go to Twitter, I will find something interesting to me. I know I won't be able to read everything, but I don't care, it's just like in a book store I know I can't read all the books, but I like to sample in the sci-fi shelves
- Antoine Bertier
@loic is becoming way too elitist lately. i didn't hear him complaining when he was following thousands of people to promote seesmic!
- Alensa
@antoine Exactly right imho most have never claimed and quite the opposite actually specified they don't/can't read every tweet but when they are on they are on and dip into the party! Loics party just got real small! ;)
- roger byrne
while search.twitter.com is useful, twitter puts you on the front of the wave not searching to catch up afterwards
- Mark Parssey
There are Wars currently on this planet, half of people dont have anything to eat, drink, there is a global economic crisis, but all that is bullshit compare to Twitter... Right? GrRRRrRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Didier Lahely
All in all, Twitter and FriendFeed are really nothing more than a Yahoo chatroom. Way too much noise and too many people that need to get over themselves.
- Charles Baldwin
i constantly wonder how you keep up with sooooo many followers. doesn't it drive you nuts????
- Francisco Kemeny
My twitterverse contains people I pay attention to, people that I have so I can search and some that I just follow for a moment and then remove.
- Josef Finsel
from twhirl
Human attention spans (and time) are limited. Twitter and IMing are a large 'experiment' , still a work in progress--the jury is out!
- JimmyJet
If you have so many followers that you have to unfollow because you didn't follow based on what the people were saying, but instead followed to up your "network", then Twitter probably isn't the venue for you. Check out MySpace and do that...
- Nicki Laycoax
*yawn* what's new here? nothing. @fidlr and others started the twexpire type experiments (look up the script if you care) long ago; not loic or scoble. i specified the #egosphere vs. #cognosphere usage scenarios long ago. @JimmyJet and @DidierLahely sum it up well. In another sense, all of this is IRC and Usenet for dummies.
- michael silverton
it's a good exercise to see how much you really miss the tweets of those you unfollow. And also see how many of them will remain followers after you unfollow.
- Mihai Secasiu
I'd argue that having 23k followers is 'doing it wrong' & you should unfollow and start over. I follow 329 right now and the signal-to-noise ratio is manageable. It's a mix of people I know intimately, casually and professionally, and that's where I have the conversations and relationship-building. Next is a handful of news and interesting/high # of followers people. Then, a few individuals with similar numbers as me I found interesting, which has allowed for Twitter-specific relationship-building.
- Laura Hall
I agree with @Johannan Edelman I have never used the autofollow function and have felt those I do follow provide value to me.
- Jill Howard Allen
As an additional note, if I were to increase my activity and wanted to manage those relationships, I'd start doing filtered lists.
- Laura Hall
Groups/filteting seems to be a more sensible and positive sltuion to the "too many followers" problem. eh.
- Doug Haslam
from twhirl
It's nice that people find what works for them, but there is no "doin' it wrong" There is only "doin it with clue" or "doin it clueless" ... if one doesn't know WHY one is doin' it, no life coach, guru, or A-lister can help. Form your own experiments and execute them. You need no approval or permission from any seeming authority figure. Look up #cognosophere and #egosophere if you care. P.S. PeopleBrowsr breaks ALL these assumptions; it's a completely new kind of literacy beyond Twitter and Friendfeed.
- michael silverton
I guess I just like to see what people are up to. Isn't that what it was all about before the marketing types took over? Now it's about "getting value" and "managing relationships". I joined so I could tell people what I was having for lunch.
- Shawn Farner
I like being in your Twitter stream, I like the idea that thought leaders and influential people like yourself occasionally get to read my updates. You know, once in a blue moon I come up with a great idea, and it's cool to know that in turn this might just inspire Scoble, or Fry for that matter, too.
- Terje Fjelde
On the other hand I hate reading about strangers "spending the entire day in bed" or "being bored," so I only follow people who add quality updates on my own account
- Terje Fjelde
the main issue comes from the fact Twitter does not help users follow and decide efficiently on new followers. Robert if you are interested we have created a new service called Topify.com. if you are interested i ll drop you an invite
- Ouriel Ohayon
Twitter has provide me a way to build a network of people and experts very quickly in fields where I previously did not have contacts or experience. To blanket unfollow would be like cutting my nose off in spite of my face.
- Stephen Terlizzi
How will this help...what will it do?
- John Flynn
ouriel: sure, send it to scobleizer@gmail.com
- Robert Scoble
robert: you ll get it in a few days, just after we migrated servers. i am sure you ll love it :)
- Ouriel Ohayon
That's not new. Loic didn't start a trend. I've only bee using these services since May and I've done it on several occasions and not just on Twitter. Several people have.
- Captain Bubbles
I did that for a while on my first (now private/personal) account, and found myself going to 5-6 follower's Twitter pages to read the news (ala RSS reader days) a couple of times a day. Now that I have a public account, I creeped up to 75-100 again but am consciously rotating folks in and out of my "Top 50." My Twitterstream is like a living, breathing being, I guess! But by intensely following different people at different times, I learn something new and can move on. It's quality, not quantity.
- Carolyn
Robert - the idea of reducing who you actively follow and relying more on search notifications is the premise of this post: "2009 Prediction: As Social Connections Reduce, Keyword Tracking Increases" http://bit.ly/hfQq
- Hutch Carpenter
My .02 I do wish twitter had an "inbox" feature so I could divide up those I follow into categories and then read tweets as I like. I know tweetdeck does this but I don't like having to rely on two pieces of software to make it work. Feeding people into my rss reader would take forever. The FriendFeed model of being able to categorize people as you friend them is perfect. Then you can check up on a particular category of people anytime you like. (i.e. politicians, Social Media nuts, writers, etc)
- Sid Burgess
I think a lot of the "unfollowing" noise is reaction to those who are gaming their follower counts on Twitter. It's upset the numerical dominance of the traditional A-listers, who were already stinging from the arrival of *real* celebrities to the service. So now there's a swing back to exclusivity. I'm not sure Loic is wrong, though: I'm planning on significantly downsizing who I follow on FriendFeed. This format seems more suitable for conversation. Twitter is fine for a big, noisy stream.
- Chris Baskind
Chris: on friendfeed just stick the people you want to rarely follow into a list, or do what I did: put the people you REALLY want to follow into a list and read that everyday. That way you'll still have the massive inflows somewhere else when you want those too.
- Robert Scoble
Chris: there is something to that, by the way. But you've only touched the surface of the breakage that happened the past month. Go deeper there and you will find the truth.
- Robert Scoble
Chris - Lists have answered this quandary for me. The bacon memes are fun, but I didn't want them filling up my main feed. And during the day, I have a professional need to focus on the world of e2.0. Lists really do serve the purpose Loic set out to accomplish.
- Hutch Carpenter
unfollow everyone on twitter, FB and every other social network. UK scientists sez that these SN sites actually rewires the nueural network within the brain and thereby making an individual more selfish and self centered. Thus cause pyschological damage to themselves.. :(- (p.s Link will follow- I just heard it this AM on FM while communting to work !!)
- Peter Dawson
You have to be damn special for me to follow you, without you following me, and I try to only follow people with a near 1:1 ratio. There are of course, exception. Sarah Crisman unfollowed me one day, I never found out why, but I didn't drop her cause I like her content.
- Matthew DeVries
Robert: I know that's an oversimplification. There are a number of factors upsetting the apple cart on Twitter, and not all of them are petty or nefarious.
- Chris Baskind
Chris: even the petty ones are deeper if you dig beyond the ego damage.
- Robert Scoble
Bad thing, and if you do it, you will confirm that you A-listers only exploited social media as your broadcasting tool for your own political agenda and not as a true conversation.
- Prokofy Neva
I got over the ego damage quickly cause # of followers never did matter. But what remains? Twitter has harmed its community. This is an easy mistake to make and it's one that comes out of @ev and @biz's arrogance. They rarely use their own tools, by the way. Look at @ev's account and tell me he's really a great Twitterer that talks with tons of people. He does not.
- Robert Scoble
Not a good thing...ummm. Wait... Are the major Twitter-User fear of their status, when too many other users get a lot of followers, too? What is the purpose of this discussion?
- Ryo / Fuck Facebook
What's even funnier is that the guy who actually came up with the idea for Twitter, @noah, is not one of the suggested followers while other people on the team are. I should write a book about how funny this all is.
- Robert Scoble
@loic seems to have quit over inane DM spam thanking for following, etc. Is there no way to stop automated use of the tools?
- Prokofy Neva
Prokofy: that's not really a good reason to follow everyone. But there are plenty of other good reasons, so I keep doing it. @Ryo you're off the rails. Get back on track. You're close to the track, but not on it.
- Robert Scoble
BS meme! the unfollowers just want to blast their mouths off and not listen to what others have to say
- DC Crowley
Prokofy: no. Twitter's DM feature really sucks. It always has. I just use it because everyone else wants to.
- Robert Scoble
Twitter's DM is a reinvention of a wheel named EMAILS.
- directeur
directeur: only done in the most lame way possible.
- Robert Scoble
Much like the FF comment system is a reinvention of vBulletin/phpBB, done in the most lame way possible.
- Ken Sheppardson
Lame? I like it.
- coldbrew
Prokofy: That is the same argument that went on for a few weeks back in November here on FF. @loic decided that unfollowing everyone was a better solution that to simply utilize the tools at hand to filter and refine his firehose. Instead of unfollowing everyone @loic could have taken these treasured 25 or whatever and put them in a tweatdeck group that brings only their DM's to him, with all the other DM's going ignored. DM's are NOT like email, there isn't an expectation of reply when you send a DM
- Matthew DeVries
Everything is a reinvention of Usenet or E-mail, or N. Just like everything on the Internet is a repost of a repost.
- Sam Levine
Let's play this out...if everyone unfollowed a significant % of those whom they don't care about...then it would INCREASE the ability to communicate with those they do care about without all the noise. I'm sure we would all agree this is a good thing. However, if we were to unfollow EVERYONE...are we little more than individual broadcasters that never allow for a two way dialogue? This would dramatically change the landscape of Twitter because a profound hierarchy would emerge: "follows" and "follow-nots"
- Drew Sams
Drew, I've been writing about that topic for a while now, but especially in recent weeks with the influx of new twitter users who don't attempt to converse yet.
- Richard A.
Don't you think it has incremental feature improvements each time though, Levine?
- coldbrew
Depending on how you use FF, it is much like IRC combined w/ Usenet
- coldbrew
Richard: most new twitter accounts I'm seeing lately are bots. Not real users and provably so. Real users display random behavior. The new accounts do not. Humans are never consistent.
- Robert Scoble
Maybe they had a falling out and Noah is no longer welcome?
- Tony C
Well, I feel kind of helpless about Loic's action. How should I react? I thought about unfollowing him, too. But I don't think that he or anyone else cares about. So well... Maybe that's the way things are going. The community makes you big, because they think, they can get use out of it being followed back, and then if you are known well enough, throw the cattle all out. Moooh!
- Ryo / Fuck Facebook
Richard, thanks for sharing...this has been a topic I'm really interested in. I'll head over to your blog and check out what you've written. Cheers!
- Drew Sams
One way in which the FF comment system is lame: comments on Scoble threads move so fast that in the time I've typed this, there will probably be five other new comments. Yet FF will chose to hide some of them and instead say "20x more comments". When I click on that, the thread expands into 5+ pages of comments, and I have to scroll down and try to remember what I saw last. Lack of read/unread status and/or visible (non-mouseover) timestamps are pretty significant time sinks/inefficiencies.
- Ken Sheppardson
Enough off-topic. I think this is ironic on a number of levels:
- coldbrew
A way to think about Loic. There are a lot of gamers who follow huge numbers, then unfollow massively to look A-List. Loic is A-List. But even so, ask yourself what *you've* gotten from Loic. If you can't answer that question, your unfollow decision should be clear.
- Hutch Carpenter
Drew: That's like saying in 1890 to communicate better with your friends/family, you need to erase the rest of the country so the mail man can find your people easier/faster. There are tools to filter and refine your communication with Twitter and Friendfeed. It is wrong to choose the nuclear option instead of just using the tools to organize their communication streams, as these platforms evolve they're going to regret casting people out and then have to be in a position to regather them again.
- Matthew DeVries
Ken: The datastream is there, write an app to create what you want.
- Matthew DeVries
Matthew: Workin' on it :-) Coldbrew: Who appointed you guy who gets to decide what's off-/on-topic? ;-)
- Ken Sheppardson
Sheppardson, not sure. Just using the convention of looking at the post title. Do you have another metric by which to judge objectively?\
- coldbrew
There's the 1st piece of irony, DeVries, " There are tools to filter and refine your communication with Twitter and Friendfeed." Le Meur's company, Seesmic, makes one of them, but it can't do its job ;-)
- coldbrew
coldbrew: I'd explain, but that'd be off topic :-P
- Ken Sheppardson
2nd piece of irony comes from the fact that Scoble is disseminating it, but he seems to be keeping a very objective stance, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Le Meur's justifications for his actions.
- coldbrew
Scoble, of course, is "well known" for following so many people all over the ecoshpere [edit: and that is ironic to me]
- coldbrew
Coldbrew: Like a black fly in your chardonnay?
- Matthew DeVries
I find the trend puzzling especially (as @Jim Connolly pointed out) when it's someone like Loic who actually built a tool to help bring method to this madness. Robert, you make it seem so easy and I am in awe as to how you manage to respond to thousands of your followers, both here and on Twitter. It's obvious that not everyone can do it, it's probably getting overwhelming for some.
- MiaD
Matthew: TOTALLY agree with you. I probably wasn't the clearest in my comment above. While I choose to unfollow bots and spammers, I prefer to use tools like Tweetdeck and others to filter conversations. The second half of my comment is what I think will happen if we go the nuclear route: Social media will just become a marketplace where ideas are broadcasted but never sharpened through the dialogue process...I don't want another place where ideas and products are hawked at me without my ability to dialogue
- Drew Sams
Well played, Sheppardson.
- coldbrew
Anyway, promiscuity in public isn't good?
- coldbrew
Unfollowing enmasse isn't good business. GKawasaki "gets" Twitter. @Loic either doesn't get it or doesn't know what 2 do with it. I unfollowed him back.
- Now Voyager
first the morons were all bout braggin bout how many followers they had, now they realize "oh shit, I can't figure out who said what and when" so now they get to un-follow & that is news. Give me a fucking break, follow or don't follow for the right reasons.In reality at the most people can have 300 odd relationships with people and sustain it beyond that it is just Hello and good bye and that's about it.
- Baba
"I unfollowed him back" Oh did ya' now?
- coldbrew
This is like watching a movie about a young passionate teen as he slogs his way the the world, making mistakes, and learning right before your eyes.
- coldbrew
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Unfollowing is always an option, but why do it without criteria???
- Jorge Martins Rosa
I could clean up a little, but I like following several hundred. I started in 2006 by following the broadcasters and some of the people that followed them and that they followed. I've slowly increased the number I follow since then. Some days I add about a dozen and unfollow about eight. I like to slowly see what people are saying, participate a little and really meet people. I can manage following hundreds.
- Bill
this is you invite people in you're house and studently you kick everybody out without reasons, i remenber when L L M always ask to be followed on twitter . anyway i also kick out from every where and delete my seemsic account .................... some french people when they become famous they got big head
- Yann
from twhirl
Not sure I agree with @loic but have been thinking the same. The relity is you can only carry relevant conversations with a limited number of people.
- RicardoSilva
I think you should do it. Just look at that number. 69,394. It does no good to follow that many people. Wipe the slate clean.
- techky
I really think Twitter should have group and thread (at least one level)
- Jeremy Chone
I found the original mail on the twitter-dev list:So I have kind of weird request. My boss, who is following 24,386 people (and has 22,752 followers) came to me and wanted me to hack something to wipe out all the people he follows so he can start clean again for various reasons. I'm curious if there is any tools internally at twitter that could help with this maybe because this seems to...
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- Daniel W. Crompton
It's insanely easy to "follow" lots of people. With groups and search in Tweetdeck (sorry @loic) and filters plus tag-focusing services like Twitterfall, I can now focus attention on a "slice" (i.e., a window pane or dialog box). It is very rare that I look at an unfiltered stream. I am almost always looking at a refined view of the entire stream. It kind of reminds me of the Matrix. The "operators" were able to see small nuances in the unadulterated feed.
- Lorin Olsen
Nevertheless, I am intrigued by reducing the number of people I follow. I want to have "intimate" conversations and not just blast tones into an echo chamber. In fairness, that is one of the reasons I am doing more in Friendfeed.
- Lorin Olsen
I think it may be good if people with large followings and who follow a lot of people had two Twitter accounts. One for broadcasting and having the ability to DM many people in your network and the second one solely for listening to quality and engaging with your core network. Doing this may solve the problems referred to above.
- Bill Romanos
@Hutch is quite correct in saying "ask yourself what *you've* gotten from Loic. If you can't answer that question, your unfollow decision should be clear." Exactly!! that should be the criteria for everyone, A-list or not. I've unfollowed some "A-listers" who are focused on things which don't tickle my fancy. Nothing personal of course, the goal is to get focused.
- Eric Gonzalez
By the way, I don't mind an unfollow, but what's up with the "tell me why I should follow you back?" business. Doesn't that seem odd?
- Eric Gonzalez
what is this twitter of which you speak?
- mike "glemak" dunn
Mike, I assume you are not following anybody so you don't need not to take any action. The proposed procedures only concern people who follow somebody else on this thing called Twitter. :-)
- Tapio Kulmala
is there an auto unfollow ?
- Antoine Bertier
Antoine, No. There was once a rumor that they have tested auto-unfollow in their lab. The performance testing results were alarming. They noticed that they should get rid of 90% of their servers in 2 weeks. The CFO decided that they could not afford that kind of capital losses.
- Tapio Kulmala
I just went through my follows on Twitter and removed a bunch of people I'd never heard of before. I forgot I had signed up with socialtoo.com when Scoble mentioned it and it's all turned off now anyway. We'll see later if my own followers suddenly will now go away cause they're using the same type of tools.
- Paul Wade
People feel slighted when unfollowed - decidedly unsocial. And with tools like Tweetdeck and peoplebrowsr allowing you to create groups (i.e. 'core people', or 'people I know' etc), there's no reason why you can't continue to follow loads of people and focus in on the ones who matter to you. It's social to follow back, and helps build relationships, but that doesn't mean you can't focus on the people who matter to you - there are tools.
- Tom Beardshaw
I even had someone I'd met (and we'd made friends on Facebook) unfollow me then add me to a "<name>monitor" twitter account, saying "this is the account I use to keep track of a wider network" - which pretty much tells you they're not paying any attention to you at all. I promptly unfollowed him. Social is multidirectional relationships - I don't like one way relationships - they're bad for your health! I follow everyone who follows me unless they're trying to sell me something
- Tom Beardshaw
So that's what happened--Loic unfollowed and then refollowed me.;-) Someone constantly keeps doing that on my FB acct., too. I must say, the more followers I get lately who are trying to tell me about how to use social media and internet marketing to get rich, the more this option sounds good. Way too many spammers lately, or just folks who aren't bothering to find out about who you really are and how to have a conversation. Ugh.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
Loic method may have been extreme, but I understand where it is coming from, at a certain number, its hard to follow who you are interested in and maybe starting over again is the way to go.. I actually created a second twitter account just for companies and organizations, because I was noticing they were taking over my original account.
- Kim Landwehr
Well - Loic simply has one big problem: He doesn´t use Tweetdeck and the Group feature! LOL
- Dieter Schwarz
Signal vs noise.
- Steve Rubel
OMG huston we have a problum
- Victor
I've already noticed a drop in my followers number. Doesn't matter to me though.
- Paul Wade
Drop in follower, but any increase in participation. That's why I unfollowed so many.
- Richard A.
Looked at who I was following and came to the conclusion most of the people I was following were unneeded, whether due to lack of interesting content or inactivity. Been unfollowing people for the last few weeks. Trying to keep it around 200
- BCK
With tools such as TweetDeck I can setup groups and searches for those tweets I care about the most. Makes number of following irrelevant.
- Robert J Taylor
I give me a chance. follow them for bit see if there interact post anything of value reply to my tweets . If not its just pointless.
- John Cusick
That may work for the twitter elite, but for users like me, it defeats the point of twitter, which is to build community by networking.
- Kelly
My comment is ...I have no comment :))
- SRivera
I semi regularly prune for my following list for relevance (for multiple values of relevance)
- Alec Clews
Terrible idea unless you want to experience true hermit status through the rate of being unfollowed prior to deleting your account.
- Roney Smith
I have always kept a limited number of people I follow. The noise level has been very manageable. T is only one of the conduits for info.
- Dave Ploch
thats retarded
- tommy payne
from twhirl
Like Dave, I'm careful about who I follow in the first place, and I've only had to unfollow a couple of people who got out of hand.
- Julie Barrett
from twhirl
I'm a careful user, and this realm showed me how people can react rapidly to certain things. I've been unfollowed more than I did unfollow. Note that I'm a curious type of guy and love discovering things in everyone. I think that can be a good thing for those whose critical to the point of stopping everything second to witness being too much analyzing those to unfollow. Else, why be that critical to the point of massive cleaning? Is digital managing difficult and tiring for some? Reminds me: GReader refresh
- ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,
I got 0 value out of following @loic, so I lost nothing. I also unfollowed.
- Mike Lewis
I can do the same thing via a Favorite list in FriendFeed.
- Bill Bittner
my god the annoying post that never ends!! :P hahah
- Terry O'Fee
Time, there is not enough time to follow everyone. It has to be narrowed at some point to still be productive in your business. I do not mind visiting a stream and subscribing..just like I do not mind unsubscribing. Just doing a total following everyone or not following anyone is absurd.
- Brian McClure
At the moment this post has close to 400 likes plus comments. Which provokes the thought: rank Friendfeed posts by likes plus comments (for the total life of Friendfeed). Might be interesting.
- Sean McBride
I deleted 700+ people just two weeks ago and it was the most FUN I have had on Twitter in 6 months.
- Daniel Zarick
[∞][twitter needs to make an second time line to US [...] so, we got one to friends and other to network ][ I have 2 accounts to do this]
- dbalieiro
Similar to the concept of declaring e-mail bankruptcy.
- David Pappas
Then it becomes a broadcast, not an exchange. How about unfollow everyone that doesn't add value to your life.
- Martha
Wow, that is interesting timing. Is it spring cleaning time for everyone or what?
- Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
At least once a week I go through several pages of twitter stream and take a look at everyone on it. I end up unfollowing at least five or six people. I still have hundreds, but it's much less than I would otherwise.
- Sandra Fernandez
as for me, good reasons for unfollowing are ppl following you then unfollowing you immediately, or people not posting in ages, or people where after a while you see having absolutely no exchange on any subject or no common interest. I try to keep my following list clear under these criteria to avoid a bloated following list
- Jean-Charles VERDIE
from twhirl
i prune my list every few weeks and add and delete, keeps it fresher
- susan mernit
I only follow a few people anyway. The "follow everyone you don't know" thing always seemed crazy to me.
- TranceMist
I have no plans of unfollowing any of the people I follow. My setup fits my marketing strategy just fine.. Don't need to jump on the bandwagon. That's the beauty of twitter... do what works for you!!
- Jim Turner
The best tool I've found for getting the most out of twitter is Tweetdeck. Set up groups to stay on top of the conversations generated by the folks you're the closest to.
- Jim Turner
I do a combination of things. I've always been selective about who I follow; if anyone gets to noisy I unfollow them; I filter it through my FriendFeed; I have specific lists set-up in Friend-Feed (even one for "chatter"); I grab the rss feeds for the Friend-Feed lists I want to focus on and have those directly imported into the RSS feed section of my email client (Thunderbird at the moment.) My email feeds have folders and message filtering rules set-up to move everything to the appropriate sub-folders.
- Gail Guy
... I can then quickly identify and scan my favorites, but best of all, I can use my email client functions to "tag" a message a certain color or "star" it as a favorite -- making it easy to find and review at a later time.
- Gail Guy
I think this is brilliant. Curbs the spammers, takes away some incentive from the fakes and keeps Twitter honest. More of my thoughts http://tr.im/gMZ8
- Chris Leonard
As soon as I got Tweetdeck I started following by subject instead of by the person.
- Carl Pruitt
Homework project: how many followers on social networks are "real?" My initial findings are astounding, participate here as we discover what's going on:
polymath22, Nicholas James, Lorin Olsen and 116 other people liked this
Visit http://twitter.com/TechCru... and now click on each follower. How many messages have they written? I just visited about 100 and only two had written more than a single message.
- Robert Scoble
Now you know why I say followers don't matter. If I fake 100,000 accounts and follow myself with them do those accounts matter to anything? No.
- Robert Scoble
But I didn't understand just how bad the spam account problem is. On friendfeed I only follow accounts that are putting content into the system. I am only putting people into my ultra special lists (ie, the ones I read first thing in the morning) if they participate. Those are the high value accounts that make being part of this fun. But how many of those accounts do each social network have? That's what matters, not whether a blank account was produced.
- Robert Scoble
Who is a bigger fan of you then yourself. :) So if your not following yourself then why provide any content? :P </sarcasm>
- CW™
They matter because other twitter users think that you are popular because you have been followed by 100,000 users. Thus, in result will entice new followers.
- charles
this is in line with participation stats from other communities like Open Source or UGC - online a thin minority contribute (in the 5%/15% range) - but it doesn't mean they're fake - just shy or dumb
- Marc Brandsma
Beau: I wish I had a tool to delete everyone who hasn't posted at least 10 Tweets from the list of people I'm following.
- Robert Scoble
I have found that a lot of people who are on social networks like Facebook or Twitter are not really there to participate but to be the voyeur (to borrow a term). They are more interested in what others are doing but rather not share their selves. It is not an uncommon social trait to be curious to what others are doing but not want them knowing what you are doing. It's small town living on the internet as I like to say.
- Christopher Mercer
Marc: I don't agree. After visiting a few hundred of these accounts now, they sure look fake and "spammy" to me.
- Robert Scoble
Christopher: that's interesting, but is very weird. Why would you want to watch what people are saying if you don't want to participate? I wonder if anyone will cop to having such an account here?
- Robert Scoble
What's your definition of 'real'? There's a difference between spam accounts (let's say created for SOE or to get you to click on a link to just 'blast' marketing) and passive accounts, where someone is happy listening. They don't *have* to participate, most are perfectly happy just watching.
- Rachel Clarke
There are 3 types of followers - real people, PR accounts and special like you :-). On my personal twitter ( http://twitter.com/michalblaha ) I prefer real people. On my project's twitter ( http://twitter.com/ontheroadto ) I prefer mix of them. I got severel very usefull contacts for http://www.ontheroad.to from my twitter followers . Its reason why I never (rather) block any of my followers.
- News from ontheroad.to
Rachel: you make a good point, but lots of these have weird names, look like spammers, and don't participate. What value are they?
- Robert Scoble
I don't know if I really understand the problem here. Granted, if you have a lot of fake followers that makes you look bigger than you are. But otherwise, who cares? I personally follow (and follow back) people based on the quality of their posts, not on how many followers they have.
- Matthias Catón
Special followers like you are real people with unbelievable number of accounts they follow - not for PR, not for spam, but to be informed. Strange think on it (for me) is how you can handle so much unstructured information together. You know some magic which I don't know ;-)
- News from ontheroad.to
Interestingly, the few I've found so far that have posted real content have had photos on their bios/accounts. I think that's a good way to filter out spammers. "No photo, no friend." :-)
- Robert Scoble
I think the major difference between me and TechCrunch would be the people who look for me and whom I add on facebook are people I actually know. I have some very close friends who are not active users of social networking sites but use them to keep up on their active user friends. As for twitter, yes a lot of accounts follow for the purpose getting follow backs. I subscribe to the the idea that just because you followed me does not mean I will follow you.
- Christopher Mercer
There are a lot of people, at least in India, who are in strict readonly mode. A lot of them just follow interesting people and read their tweets and shares. Its almost like a substitute for Google Reader. So judging by just the tweet count would be unfair. If there were a last login time in the twitter api, it would make more sense.
- Ritesh
Matthias: well, I have been getting more and more spam into my DM column, so there's the danger of that. Yeah, there really isn't too much harm other than if you are in this to just game your follower count that people will figure out that you really don't have an engaged audience there. That will catch up with you eventually. I know I'm more likely to follow someone who has a really great set of friends/followers. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
- Robert Scoble
I think that you are most likely to follow a person who is in the field of your interest, much the same way you subscribe to a feed. I, for one, follow many of the social media geeks since the subject interests me, but I very rarely participate in discussions. I enjoy reading what others are saying and shared news and links. So I guess I am a social network voyeur (@Mercer) :)
- "Jazzperous" Isaksson
Robert - agree with you about the spammers. I block them all. I also block those who aren't automated spammers but still doing the same behaviour. They have no value for you, or me. I'm wondering what value they have for themselves, if they are like spam email where they get enough interaction to make it worthwhile.
- Rachel Clarke
I was followed last night by someone, who it took me 6 pages of back tweets to find 3 actual tweets that did not say 'thanks you for following me' targeted at followers, looks like a real person, but boy so little content, not worth following back.
- Carl Grint
I think its the amount of posts is the give away. Even if people are just taking it in I do not like the idea of passive tweeters. You have to get in and get your hands dirty.
- Sam Philp
Techcrunch has a lot of inactive followers recently because they're listed in the recommendation box for every new Twitter user. But I agree with other commenters, who follows you and how active they are is irrelevant. The real power of Twitter and all social media is in the conversation, not in the lurking.
- Stuart Dallas
On twitter I always page back through recent tweets before following someone back. Generally speaking if I find at least one message or link that's interesting I follow them. I'm not hugely bothered if I'm not followed back. It's not always bidirectional, what you get out doesn't always correspond to what you put in and that's why I find it useful.
- John Samuelson
from BuddyFeed
I think reasons to why I don't interact more, is that 1) my English is limited 2) I feel I don't know enough about the subject, but still have a great interest in it 3) I am a quiet person... Would you guys block me?
- "Jazzperous" Isaksson
"No Photo, No Friend" Sounds like a good qualifier. I can't help thinking though that there is a ton of people who try something like twitter just to see what it is, don't get it in the first 3 minutes and then give up. Shame.
- Jay McCormack
I try to participate as much as possible but being just a happily married regular "Joe" with a nuclear family may not be very interesting to most. That said, I have received benefits in the form of personal and professional growth as a direct result of participation in social networks.
- Mattb4rd
Sam, Stuart, John, Carl, bing, bing, bing. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Interesting how you can classify users based on who they are following and who is following them. The amount of interaction I'm getting here and on Twitter about this (despite it being 3 a.m. in the morning) tells me that people are finding this a real problem.
- Robert Scoble
A bunch of ghost followers can make the difference, that's for sure. Stupid as it may seem, as a presentation card when you first check someone's tweets, it works. You say, hey this guy has 10000, 20000, 60000 followers so that must be for a certain reason spammers included. But still I wonder what the use is except for a bunch of extra work. It is clear that many will hold on to your tail just to feed on the hosting tweeter but they count too. I suppose that a proper balance is ok.
- Carlos Lorenzo
Jeppe: I think it is a mixture of things. On facebook you'd never get friended because I use it for friends and family. On twitter you just would not get a follow back. Since everyone uses these applications differently it is really a contextual issue. Following me is much different than following Robert, Mike A, Doc Searls, etc.
- Christopher Mercer
Mattb4rd makes an interesting point... problem is I don't think there's such a thing as a regular 'Joe'. Everyone has something to share, a passion, a hobby, a special knowledge of some sort. It's getting beyond the 'what i had for breakfast' posts that provide the real value.
- Jay McCormack
Christoper: Yes, think you are right.
- "Jazzperous" Isaksson
Carlos: well, now that the number of followers people have has no integrity I am looking under other rocks too and finding no integrity elsewhere. Some people really try to keep their accounts clean. Others, including me, let all sorts of muck in. I think I will clean that out. Why? Because now that I'm looking at other people's followers I see that having lame followers around isn't good at all.
- Robert Scoble
Christopher: it's interesting, now that I stuck my foot in my mouth over the weekend on the Twitter suggested friends issue people who work for big brands have been talking to me about what they want on social networks. "Real" is a word I hear over and over again. Why? Because users who participate and push the brands are much more important than users who sit there and do nothing. They've already learned that, so why do we feel so compelled to gather up do nothing followers? I'm going to change that.
- Robert Scoble
John: That's exactly the approach I use. Someone follows me? I will check out his tweets to see if there's at least a few that interest me - then I will follow back. The number of followers is of secondary concern to me. As for the number of tweets, I go for the opposite: I prefer less.
- Matthias Catón
I don't follow anyone new back. Too many of them were flooding my timeline with no participation. If you want to follow me that's fine, but it's only with @ replies that you'll get me to pay attention to what you're doing. I might however drop by the blog.
- Richard A.
I found a new algorithm: the quality of your follower count is totally dependent on how many accounts have non-default pictures. The problem is that if you actually wrote that algorithm and implemented it then the spammers would quickly figure out they better put a new photo on the account.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: In my case I work according to a different algorithm. I unfollow anyone that hasn't replies a single time. I don't follow anyone new until they've exchange a few messages with me. If I want to listen to a monologue I simply go to their blog ;-)
- Richard A.
Robert: This 'particular' influx of masses of spam accounts into Twitter is relatively new. Leo Laporte spoke about it recently. As Twitter gains more and more media coverage, it becomes a more attractive place for people to produce these spam accounts. I got an email through http://thetechnewsblog.com from one of my readers, to say she had been told that they controlled my a few users, who are planning some kind of mass attack on Twitter. Who knows?
- Jim Connolly
Robert: I have been slowly coming to the same conclusion; it is not enough to be careful who you follow, you should also care about who follows you... But doesn't this mean Twitter should change the behavior of the Follow button to Ask Permission To Follow ? (or at least provide it as an option for those who want to filter their followers)
- Antoine Bertier
Does it matter whether it's a picture (like of a human) or just non-default?
- Jay McCormack
Twitter should forget about celebrity accounts and encourage dialogue. What makes any social network work is dialogue. Without conversation twitter would be gathering dust as a home server somewhere.
- Richard A.
Robert, I think in your case the nothing followers are people who have decided to user twitter (in the example of twitter) to follow your activities. In my case they likely just want to spam me (hoping I follow back) and in the one case someone used @<username> to spam me, I blocked them.
- Christopher Mercer
Jim: but look at the accounts that are following TechCrunch. Then compare to the accounts that are following me. Mine have pictures on them. Techcrunch's don't. Mine are participants who Tweet. TechCrunch's are not. It's very strange.
- Robert Scoble
Christopher: I disagree. Some accounts are gathering a lot of these "fake" accounts than my account is, for instance. Why is that?
- Robert Scoble
Robert: That's because Michael doesn't speak with his followers - just broadcasts TC posts. It's easy for spammers to 'follow' him without him noticing. You would notice it AND make some noise.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: maybe, I'm not sure that's true. But it does seem to have something to do with the new Twitter suggested friends list.
- Robert Scoble
A lot of posts are very helpful links to interesting things - which I appreciate. However it's seems really difficult to engage anyone in a real conversation or get an answer to a question.
- Breck Stewart
Robert: If a spammer follows one of those 'suggested friends', they get MORE followers themselves. These accounts are super-active right now. By being seen on those follower lists, people follow the spammers too. It's only a small percentage, but if Veronica or Michael can get 60k new followers in 14 days, the numbers these spammers can get is higher, than if they followed me. On my list, very few people would 'see' them.
- Jim Connolly
Finally some traction on this as I only brought it up on the 14th Feb ;) http://twitter.com/styleti... , as I commented on thetechnewsblog its not just about the fact they are fake and bolstering the numbers think what chaos or hram these 10's of 1000's could do to Twitter if they all started spamming or tweeting at once!?
- roger byrne
You know, there is a website that lets you unfollow inactive users and users that never posted a tweet. Twitter Karma! http://dossy.org/twitter...
- Gloson Teh
and if you look into it further the 'Norm' for these accounts is one update and all following 20-22 of Twitters suggested followers!
- roger byrne
what Christopher Mercer said, on my personal id I only follow people who I think have something interesting to say or whose info I want to see, this also includes friends and family. On my projects id I look at every follower and as long as I don't think its a spam follower I follow them also, but I don't read the posts apart from the first page when I first sign in. There I'm providing info for others. I will reply to any questions of course.
- Tina Clarke
Beau: no, thanks, I hadn't seen that yet. @ev is full of crap. These accounts are totally different than the average Twitter account. Look at my followers. Then go and look at the followers on any of the top 20 accounts. Totally different behavior (no icons, no posts). Personally I don't mind. Twitter has now corrupted itself and I really have lost all caring I used to have over that service. It's why I'm putting my friendfeed likes into Twitter now. I really have no incentive not to push everyone here.
- Robert Scoble
I bet that by the end of March that Twitter goes through and deletes all sorts of accounts. Just watch. These accounts don't help the system out. They look lame because they are lame.
- Robert Scoble
I'm real. I may be boring, but I'm real. ;) I block spammers and I don't automatically follow non-spammers back. I only follow people I am already friends with or new people I find interesting. A particular pet peeve of mine is being followed by self-gurus and social network marketing "experts". Ironically, after complaining about these "Tony Robbins types" on Twitter I was followed by the director of Robbins' films. ;)
- Eric Williams
Eric: no doubt YOU are real. But here's one of the lame accounts: http://twitter.com/Serious... -- following only 20 people. No followers. No messages. Only standard icon. This was created by a computer, not by a human being. Now, go through any of the 20 people he's following and look at the follower accounts. They are all lame! I love it, create tons of fake accounts and make your numbers higher and higher.
- Robert Scoble
"This was created by a computer, not by a human being." - As a categorical statement, I think this goes too far. It could easily be the equivalent of discussion forum lurking.
- John Craft
John: sorry, I disagree. The pattern is out of wack. I'm sure there might be a few people who exhibit this pattern, but not thousands among thousands. Also, the pattern changed a few weeks ago. Explain that.
- Robert Scoble
@john craft Bull and you know it ;) check through pages of followers in fact pick page 200 of any of the ppl and you can see how many accounts this really is that we are discussing here, you ever saw 100,000 lurkers before because this is what this amounts to! Now opposite to Robert I believe these people have no responsibility for this but also the fact there has been no action against it beggars belief why? This could seriously screw up their service!
- roger byrne
And, John, let's say you are right, that these are real humans who created on their own the same kind of account. Follow just the same 20 people. Don't change your icon. Don't post a Tweet. Etc. Etc. Are they as valuable as, say, the people who are following me who actually post, actually have attractive icons, actually follow more than just the defaults? No way, no how. They aren't "real" to advertisers. Why not? Because they exhibit no behavior that will turn into sales. THAT is what advertisers want.
- Robert Scoble
the pattern changed for all accounts at the same time chk twitter counter its 9th -11th of Feb for all these accounts...
- roger byrne
"They aren't "real" to advertisers." That, I agree with.
- John Craft
Roger: Twitter is now corrupted and we are just starting to understand the beginnings of what happens when you corrupt your community. Luckily we have a non-corrupted community here to contrast with Twitter.
- Robert Scoble
Thank Robert I love Twitter and it HAS changed my life so I have no plans to leave or to accuse people of wrong doing but if it was my baby I sure would be taking care of it much more!
- roger byrne
roger: me too, but they don't listen to their real users. I guess I should have just been a user like TechCrunch. In fact, I'm starting to understand just how right Mike Arrington is when he pointed out to me that I should blog more on a service that I can control.
- Robert Scoble
This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. If I'm twittering a robot then I'm wasting my time!
- Captain Jack
Captain: nah, I've learned over and over again that blogging/twittering into the wind actually can be useful. I've Twittered things just to get them off my chest, for instance. I've also blogged things just to get them into Google so I can pull them out later. On Twitter I could get readers just by having fun with http://search.twitter.com -- no followers needed.
- Robert Scoble
Captain: it's a serious issue because this, and the very lamely developed suggested friends feature, demonstrate that there's something Rotten in the State of Denmark. But we already knew that because of how many times we have seen the fail whale over past two years.
- Robert Scoble
I find myself checking to see if someone has a blog in their profile also. So for me it's photo+blog=friend.
- Jay McCormack
As the government is so keen to do when there is wrong doing, they call for an investigation. I think its time to call for an investigation and demand answers. I for one don't want to use a system that inflates its number for personal gain. I have discovered that having control is better when social networking. Twitter reminds me of those networking lunches where everyone is expected to give 2 referrals.
- Russ Jackson
And all of these "followers" follow exactly 20 people... I'm enlightened. I was wondering what was happening to my modest Twitter account when it suddenly started attracting all kinds of unlikely followers recently - but it's probably the same thing, machines, and not a sudden burst in popularity. Oh, well. Thanks for reminding me of my FriendFeed account via Twitter.
- Terje Fjelde
Jay: that certainly works for me. Russ: I don't worry too much about it. If I can figure this out with 15 minutes of poking around so can everyone else. I am sure a bunch of these accounts will disappear soon. Twitter doesn't want to be embarrassed by this because it won't help them monetize anyway. Unless they are charging per thousand views and then advertisers will figure out the accounts aren't real very quickly anyway.
- Robert Scoble
Playing devil's advocate: Isn't it also possible that many of these "lame" accounts belong to people who just recently joined? They haven't spruced up their profiles, haven't had the courage to tweet, only follow recommended twits, and are generally feeling their way around the service before getting fruitfully involved. Of those, I bet a large number decide Twitter isn't for them and leave their accounts dormant.
- Eric Williams
Eric: it's possible, but very unlikely (it's also possible I could win the lottery four times in a row). After all, this was NOT the behavior of lurkers BEFORE Feb. 6. Why would it change on that date? You really think there are lurkers out there who'll behave exactly the same in groups of thousands? I don't. Not possible, because of how people get pulled into Twitter. You get pulled in by your friends. So, there will be some variability there.
- Robert Scoble
Robert I agree if you can figure it out in 15 minutes than everyone else can too. I was saying it tongue and cheek. It says something about those who have to inflate there numbers though. Perhaps they are lacking in something or in an area. LOL
- Russ Jackson
Sounds like you're really letting this nonsense get to you. Relax. The free market of ideas that is the net will sort it out before long. If Twitter sucks, it won't survive. Then again, I'd have expected MySpace to die a horrible death long ago. Hmm...maybe Twitter won't die, but it'll become an internet ghetto for the terminally lame (like AOL). ;)
- Eric Williams
my app works on its own as well as as the frontend for the twitter team themselves. Instead of having to report @spam and then go through all your friends to find the bastard to block.... it would auto-parse out 'potential and known' spammers into a group.. one click and your account is clean, meanwhile any new ones are sent off to a convenient way for the twitter team to once-over the account to see if its legit or if its spam.
- Brent Terrazas
Eric: online communities have been getting to me since 1985. You're right, just because something sucks doesn't guarantee its death. In fact, it can easily get much more popular, even with these flaws. That said, now I have something new to think about. It's not the end of the world. Just the end of the importance of followers. :-)
- Robert Scoble
In the last month there have actually been close to 7 full blown twitter mass account creation and/or twitter mass account spammer apps released. Some cost over $200. Regardless, everyone i Affiliate marketing is going ga-ga over this... this is literally the beginning of a new era of twitter spam..
- Brent Terrazas
I never gave a rat's ass how many people followed me anyway. As long as I have enough followers to maintain interesting conversations, I'm happy. :)
- Eric Williams
Eric: you don't need any followers to have interesting conversations. Friendfeed proves that. :-)
- Robert Scoble
This is my first real FriendFeed convo. I'm still not entirely comfortable here. Keeping track of conversations feels like too much work. Either I have to visit the web page and manually reload or use something like Twhirl and drown in a flood of data. Am I just really dense? Is there an easier way to keep up without being overwhelmed that I just don't know? Is the learning curve less steep than I think?
- Eric Williams
Are followers following someone else's follows just because they deem that person to be an influential tweeter?
- Mark Fletcher
Eric: I just use the web page and refresh.
- Robert Scoble
Mark: I don't think so. Three weeks ago I was on Twitter's top 10 list, so should be getting nailed if that's the case. I'm not getting nailed that way.
- Robert Scoble
Robert: Excuse my ignorance, but surely you know someone with connections at Twitter? Ask them. There's something seriously weird going on.
- Jim Connolly
Jim: I'll ask Biz when I wake up.
- Robert Scoble
Still trying to get my head round friend feed. as far a Twitter goes, I follow a few "celebrities" and interesting people but most of my actual "tweets" are intended for my family and real life friends. I guess most people who don't know me personally won't be interested that I've just walked the dogs or I'm going to bed, but friends and family will be as they will know if it is ok to phone or visit me. My facebook is really only intended for my family.
- Andy
Robert, you and I think a lot alike so there's really nothing more I can add. It. would be nice to have some sort of threshhold setting that a person has to have nnn posts before you can follow them. But then, that could be gamed also.
- Keith Barrett
they're building them like you build blog farms.... at first while amassing quantity, you don't spam outsiders, u link up and spit out aggregated comments, then at somme point boom.. all 5k go off and spam.... onto the next 5k...etc..friending a top 10 would=ban
- Brent Terrazas
I don't twitter a lot but that is because who would find my changing nappies and going to pick up the kids from school interesting? Okay maybe one day of that but everyday the same tweets? I'm one of the ones that find other lives more interesting than my own at the moment until things start to get interesting in my own!!!! and no I'm not embarrassed to admit that.
- May
As far as I see, even unreal followers can help to get real ones. Many people just look how many follower you have, and only follow you, if you seem to be popular a.k.a. having a lot of followers. It's like real life. You getting more and more attractive, if more people think you are :) Weird? No, just human nature.
- Ryo / Fuck Facebook
A large chunk are just people that are hoarding contacts.
- Gerard van Schip
Beau: the main goal of a private account seems to be to make the tweets private (they are do not appear in everyone, or in search for instance). The interesting side effect is that you get to filter your followers, but there is no reason to limit this feature to private accounts. The issue is not to prevent valueless accounts to get my updates (since they are meant to be public) it is rather to prevent them from polluting the list of followers that appear on my profile.
- Antoine Bertier
Almost every time I "tweet" I get several notices that so and so is now following me. when I go through to their accounts, twitter have usually deleted them or they have nonsense tweets about this or that product that i "need" to enhance my life
- Andy
What is real? I have to remind you, Robert, that we met online. And now we are real. I met @stevegillmor, @karoli, @mobilejones, and so many more people online and they are as real to me as @chelseahardaway, my daughter, who is now also my online friend. It' a blur. I know tons of my Twitter and FB friends personally.
- Francine Hardaway
from twhirl
Where's the white paper on this? You should be writing it.
- Francine Hardaway
from twhirl
I seem to have added about 50-60 followers in the last day or on Twitter, which is unusual for me. Honestly, I wonder why as I am not a heavyweight twitterer...nor do I think I post anything particularly profound or even useful. The only things I changed recently were putting a bio, blog link and headshot in, so I assume that this is what many people look for...I think the human factor is sometimes lost with the proliferation of social networking.
- John Samuelson
I have a number of accounts in places where I participate by observation. Seriously. We all pick and choose what we do with limited time and endless choices of what to do with that time. I've only been "twitter-active" for the last week or so, "twitter-dormant" for a year or two. The point is that I don't recommend writing off the silent majority as spammers or of no use. They contribute by being the audience for much of what goes on, via Twitter and other channels.
- Colin Wheeler
Are you going to blog your numbers? That would be cool if you did.
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
Also, an analogy I like using - swimming in the sea; some folk are OK to jump in where it's deep, others want to slowly inch their way into the waves, others will stand still and wait until the tide reaches their chest ... but they are all getting wet! And probably all will end up swimming to one degree or another. Well, it sort of explains my point ;-)
- Colin Wheeler
It's amazing how many fake accounts I see trying to connect with me. I'm still a small Twitter user and getting everyday a couple of spams, is way too much.
- Zack Brandit
Robert, are you trying to fight with Turing test? :)
- A.T.
Speaking only for myself: I follow a lot of people because in my position (someone who teaches new media journalism) it is a potentially valuable way of keeping up with thought leaders (like you, Robert!) ... and is increasingly replacing my use of RSS feeds. While I would also like to accumulate my own cadre of followers, at this point in time I still prefer to spend my time on longer, more thoughtful items (i.e., blog posts) than tweets. That may change in the future.
- Rich Gordon
i'm real.... just real quiet :)
- todd
I am a human :)
- Joe Dawson
I like to follow Twitter conversations from my iPhone but often don't like to type out a response if I'm away from a keyboard. And it just feels odd responding to a tweet that's been up for a while. So not sure if that makes me one of the odd ones that watches more than comments, but it works for me :)
- craterdweller
Have you seen Brooks Bayne's post on this subject: http://brooksbayne.com/post... - seems to confirm what you're saying Robert. I've been thinking of zeroing my twitter followers and asking the real people to re-follow. Bet I'd lose 50% or more.
- Leo Laporte
Maybe I should start working again on my little web app, that lists your followers and the date of their most recent tweet. I guess it's also possible to get the number of updates along with this time/date...
- Holger Eilhard
Last summer I took a look at the full feed from Identi.ca, and found that around 25% of all registered users had posted only once. Only half had posted more than 5 times, and IIRC, the 80/20 "rule" applied and ~80% of the traffic came from the top 20% of users. I'd be surprised if Twitter's stats were much different (chart: http://kshep.posterous.com/more-id...)
- Ken Sheppardson
I think there's a lot of dormant accounts. Join, use the service for a bit, then fade away. Takes too much work to maintain a lot of networking sites.
- Barry Biddlecomb
from twhirl
I think there are only 5 real people out there. :)
- mikepk
I think real <> volume. Isn't the value of this technology many frequent intersections on many different threads...Is there a map that shows the frequency of those people's interactions elsewhere? We (I) don't all have time to trawl through the feeds alll the time. It's an attention economy and we (I) split it between about 7 sources on average every day..?
- dromologue
mikepk: I'm convinced there are ~101,000 real people, as I've seen that many in one place at one time in person (Michigan Stadium.. Go Blue). The rest is all CGI. Of course there's no reason you should believe me, as I'm just part of the plot to deceive you.
- Ken Sheppardson
I'm real . Blip beep zip <CR> <LF>
- Ken Pruett
I'm real, at least I'm pretty sure I'm real.
- Aram Zucker-Scharff
from twhirl
Far better of an argument is how much traffic is truly real.
- Patricia
I think active users who are authentic = real. I have been getting lots of phonies following me lately. Get real!
- Jeremy Campbell
from twhirl
wow, such a long and winded thread discussing phenomena of followers and following. it is very simple, really. follow whom you think is interesting to you and with whom there might be possible exchange of information and life experience. I do find Robert and some of his friends quite intersting. I do however not follow the A-lister bloggers or entrepreneurs whose feeds are prevalently twitter insider info. Fake followers? That happens, it is inevitable with FF- and Twitter-like architecture. Live with it.
- Hayk H.
I find twitter is just a entertainment tool. It's better served for popular people to make fans feel like they have a live channel to their idol. Marina of hotforword.com uses twitter for such purpose. She doesn't even follow me on twr and I'm her assistant on her website. Micro blogging just waste too much time when one could spend it on adding more content to your master blog.
- Captain Jack
I'm real. But I must admit that I do a lot more following on twitter (and here) than posting. And I only follow informed people. Don't care for the silly stuff.
- lolise
This thread proves one thing, Robert: your friendfeed followers certainly are "real." :) The number of comments on this thread are a bit overwhelming.
- Steve Lynch
from twhirl
It's not about "how many" - it's who, in what context, and by what percentage. Check out http://twitter-friends.com for a glimpse of the social network analytics that addresses these questions.
- Lawrence Liu
Greetings Robert, some of us use the social channel as our news source. We do not input a lot however we are consumers of the feed. Does that make us not real?
- James Tallman
James: you're real, I wouldn't worry. Here's the deal, though. "Real" people always exhibit random behavior. Always. Whenever you see 10,000 people who sign in, add the same people, don't do any posts, don't customize their icon, don't add any random friends, that can be demonstrated to be fake. Why? Cause everyone hears about Twitter from someone else and there's variability in the friends they add. At least there was before February 6. What happened after that date? Twitter's community was corrupted.
- Robert Scoble
I'd say based on recent twitter experience about 25%. I'm a relative nobody, and my followers quadrupled. My guess is they are all REAL nobodies.
- jcunwired
The challenge is that many tools use the number of followers to "rank" you and make you an influencer. Is it right? No, but we have to play with the rules we have.
- Julio F ~ @SocialJulio
For us newbies on twitter and friendfeed, it's pretty challenging navigating all the comments. A lot of interesting stuff out there but it moves so fast you almost have to be plugged in 24/7 to catch the conversation that most interests you. That's tough when we all have lives outside the Internet ;-) I'm wondering if there are unwritten "rules" I missed somewhere...How long can we be silent (attending to other business) and still be considered "real" followers?
- Donna Horne
Julio: bing. Which is why the integrity of Twitter is now gone. Advertisers might be fooled, but not for long. This world passes info around so fast it'll make your head spin so anyone who buys advertising (or hands out access or something else like review units) based on Twitters follower numbers is lame and deserves to be ripped off.
- Robert Scoble
I believe twitters integrity is being challenged by its own success and spamming, hopefully this opens up the market for friendsfeed and 3rd party filtering applications.
- Carl Plant
Carl: Twitter's integrity is being challenged by its own stupid decisions and lame algorithms. But they probably will just arrogantly write off this as the ranting of someone who was punished by them. Which is true.
- Robert Scoble
Robert - bingo!
- Susan Beebe
I'll only follow if people have made the effort to upload a photo, sent at least a few messages to show me they're going to give me something to follow and most of all - dont proclaim they are the best at anything / use their twitter account as a billboard..
- Matt Randles
also, a tool to go through existing contacts and see those who have less than 10 updates or say no updates in the last 90 days ... with intention of removing would be cool, unfortunatly the twitter api limits mean running it would have to be low process and could take a long time..
- Matt Randles
"I've been trying to decipher your little word association game for over a week now, to no avail... I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that Foster may have been playing on that bizarre Willie Nelson/Julio Iglesias duet in the 1980s -- "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" -- see, sometimes reality exceeds imagination."
- Terje Fjelde
"Well, did he? (I don't think he did)"
- Terje Fjelde
"You're welcome - glad you enjoyed it. You realize, of course, that we're the same age Foster was when he did "Stealing Home" in '88. Have you written your "Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire" yet?"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Lost in the ’70s: Cheryl Ladd, “Think It Over” - http://popdose.com/...
"Brenda Russell wrote "Think It Over," I think. She recorded a version in 1979, and it's way smooth, very CTI/Creed Taylor-like, with trembling Fender Rhodes and jazz guitar."
- Terje Fjelde
"Brenda Russell wrote "Think It Over," I think. She recorded a version in 1979, and it's way smooth, very CTI/Creed Taylor-like, with trembling Fender Rhodes and jazz guitar."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Dw. Dunphy On… The New Indie Stereotypes - http://popdose.com/dw-dunp...
"So you finally discovered the path to success, Dw. Good for you! I just read an article written by a Norwegian sociologist slash parody glam rocker about indie rockers. It was pretty awesome, but it's written in Norwegian, so there's no point linking to the article. I translated a couple of paragraphs just for fun. It's a tongue-in-cheek translation, so please indulge me: "On paper, Indie culture is a breeding ground for creativity and fantasy. In reality, it's a playground with easily recognizable cardboard characters: Four white boys between 18 and 35, occasionally a female bassist, performing semi-melodic verse/refrain-tunes with thin, flaky vocals, sharp, intrusive guitar chords and a bumpy, slightly hectic ryhthm section. It sounds speculatively primitive. Raw, and always a bit off-center. Even at its cutest indie has a self-aware attitude that smells like student flats, art school, cult movies, thick books and dry wine. And a large record collection. Their wardrobe is equally..."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Into the Ear of Madness, Week 33 — Procrastinating | Popdose - http://popdose.com/into-th...
"I don't really how I feel about the Payolas album. I mean, all the Foster stuff is in there and I would probably have loved it back in '85 - and maybe still today, in a nostalgic way. But I heard it for the first time eight or nine years ago, and the first thing that popped into my mind was: empty, empty, empty."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Into the Ear of Madness, Week 33 — Procrastinating | Popdose - http://popdose.com/into-th...
"Hm, that's an interesting perspective. I think we could easily come up with an entire series here on Popdose focusing on that alone: Beatles/Martin, Cohen/Spector, Horn/Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Foster/Chicago, Prefab Sprout/Thomas Dolby ... heck, even Alan Tarney/A-ha's debut album. Who made it great, who made it suck, and why?"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Into the Ear of Madness: Week 31 — Foster Freeze | Popdose - http://popdose.com/into-th...
"I'm happy to see that so many of you are still here. I only hope that I can live up to all of your expectations in weeks to come -- I'm searching for motivation with a microscope."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Adventures Through the Mines of Mellow Gold 49 | Popdose - http://popdose.com/adventu...
"I'm chiming, but mostly because I'm celebrating the return of Adventures Through the Gold of Mellow Mining. I also feel obliged to mention that David Foster composed and arranged a total of 17 tracks on "Nigel Olsson", "Nigel Olsson" and "Nigel". And yet I don't own any of them."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: The Sixteenth Day of Mellowmas: Into the Ear of Mellowmas Madness | Popdose - http://popdose.com/the-six...
"Hey, I'm tall! Alan O'Day calls me Turje. If you add a 'D' in there, you're probably as close to a good pronunciation of my name as you'll ever get."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: The Fifteenth Day of Mellowmas: Dollytoe! | Popdose - http://popdose.com/the-fif...
"The keyboard sound, the fake strings. Who can it be?"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: The Ninth Day of Mellowmas: Fats? | Popdose - http://popdose.com/the-nin...
"Engineer Steve Reynolds said "It's like Fats Domino entertaining you in his own living room." Too true. This was Domino's first major-label studio album since 1968. Now ain't that a shame. Still, despite its obvious drawbacks, it's probably the best thing you've posted so far. The wrapping's kind of tacky, but the style is pure Fats."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: The Fifth Day of Mellowmas: A Little River Christmas | Popdose - http://popdose.com/the-fif...
"I actually thought of you when I watched "Step Brothers" a couple of weeks ago and Will Ferrell wore a Pablo Cruise t-shirt."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: CHART ATTACK!: 12/3/77 - http://popdose.com/chart-a...
"Woo-hoo"
- Terje Fjelde
Re: The Fifth Day of Mellowmas: A Little River Christmas | Popdose - http://popdose.com/the-fif...
"I was sort of disappointed that Graham Russell's voice didn't turn up in the chorus singing "girl you're every woman in the world to me" after all this talk of ordinary girls and carpenters."
- Terje Fjelde
Re: Into the Ear of Madness: Week 10 — The Olympics - http://popdose.com/into-th...
"Yes, we have to step very carefully. And I do."
- Terje Fjelde
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