Every few days, someone I follow on Twitter complains that everything on Twitter is the “same old, same old…” as my friend CC Chapman put it this morning.
What CC and others tend to forget about Twitter is that each of us creates our own unique stream by the people we choose to follow. They become our newspaper, giving us news, views, commentary and diversion.
Over time our interests change. Our friends change. Our business strategies change. There are people you have followed for years in your stream who have posted nothing in recent times that seems to be of interest or value to you.
It’s not that Twitter is getting old and stodgy. The problem is your stream has gone stale. The solution is simple. Dump a whole lot of people you follow ad replace them with new voices, who have new thoughts taking you to new places.
In my view people pay too much attention to who and how many people follow them and far too little attention to who they follow.It’s not just the quality, quantity is also a factor.
I am a news junkie and follow many topics. I prefer a thick newspaper and so I follow people all over the world. I find that I can follow 1800 at one time. Keep in mind that all 1800 never post simultaneously, so the content I review is very manageable.
But when I add on more than 1800, it get cumbersome. Like a bad newspaper, I find myself reading too much that is not relevant or amusing to me.
So I start cutting. If someone posts a tweet that just doesn’t interest me, I visit their stream and see what they generally are talking about. If it is uninteresting, I simply stop following. It is not personal. It is more like an editor chopping copy from a report who just didn’t hit the right news story at the right time.
Now and then, I offend someone. I regret this. But who I follow is important and selfish. It is not an issue of relationships–although it can impact relationships. It is an issue of information and how I can keep Twitter fresh and relevant as time goes on.
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Being on other people’s lists is important as it shows other people find you interesting. While you can’t control what lists you’re on, go through relevant industry lists and follow the people that create them. Everybody wins!
I along with Shel pretty much only live tweet although I understand why different people have different motivations and needs to create lists, stream, or whatever.
Personally, I have been finding that FB contains more valuable information for me and I don’t have to worry about being ‘live’ to retrieve the feeds as I will be able to go back throughout the day, although people who want me to help them find a Farmville cow do irritate.
Has anyone found this to be true also?
Remember, lists can keep things under control. While I have some lists designed for public consumtion (such as my Follow Friday list), I also have lists for subject matte (e.g., leadership) that I don’t want to clog my timeline, but I’d like to check out when I have the time or desire.
JC people, its just twitter. I use it to keep my insanity. Seldom gets deeper & I dont keep score. Go ahead & plagiarize if you need that to feel good about yourself. Who cares?
Some people follow me and I do not know why. They never respond, they never retweet, never send messages. So, why bother following me? At a party, if you migrate from one group to another saying nothing, people will say you are strange. Twitter is the same for me – I want to gossip, to rant, to have a conversation, to be connected.
We all have our interests and our tweets reflect them. I am more tech – my links are mostly related to SEO, Analytics, improving websites, etc. If you are using me as a source – great. But why not retweet or say, “This article you posted is bunk!”
When silent people drop me – I do not care. When someone who I had a good Twitter relationship with drops me – that hurts a little. You feel like a friend moved to Africa and it is too expensive to call. However, it is completely unrealistic to expect people to manage thousands of Twitter relationships at a time. Twitter is for meeting new people, seeing the world through their eyes and getting interested in something you haven’t heard of. I understand, when someone moves on.
I like that you are talking about change – indeed, we all change and it is healthy. The bigger the world around us, the more valuable we are to the world. Maintaining a trim active Twitter account is a good thing. And it is nice to know that you actually have connected with someone and they connected with you even if you are no longer Twitter buds.
Great post. I tend to agree with making cuts here and there but, as you said, it can affect relationships in real life so some people I just have to leave be ;)
It would be easier to do this with better list management and people management tools. What ate your favorites?
Howard,
I use very few tools and have abandoned lists. I just use Twitter and ad and cut ad hoc.
I agree with you completely and it is where my Twitter Lists are critical to me and I’m constantly cutting, culling and looking for new people.
It was not a comment about Twitter, but more about what I’m seeing from a lot of people lately that are drinking the kool-aid and spitting it back out more than ever across all platforms.
Glad I gave you something to write about this morning though. *grin*
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