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I will only follow people that I care enough about to not miss anything they have to share. In a sense, to follow hundreds of people is to devalue the very people you are following. Your likelihood of missing a real friend’s update exponentially grows with the number of other people you follow. Care more, follow less.
– Follow people, purposefully and personally. The less people you follow, the more personal the experience and the higher the likelihood that you’ll be paying attention. Do the opposite and you’ll drive yourself crazy playing catchup. -
Following doesn’t mean paying attention. You don’t want numbers on Twitter, not really. What you want is to follow and be followed by human beings who care about issues you care about.
– Jeffrey Zeldman on Stop Chasing Followers. The people I have as friends on Facebook and Twitter are completely different based on interest. Anyone I interact with on Twitter has either tech news, Apple, software, business, photography or political inclinations. I have friends that I know personally that follow me on Twitter and I occasionally get questioned why I don’t reciprocate the following. My response: “That’s what I have Facebook for”. No one I follow on Facebook shows the same passion for any of the topics I’m interested in as much as the people I follow on Twitter, hence me being very particular about who I decide to follow. -
Reading Tweets is a source of connection to people I know and care about, and a source of inspiration from many others. And posting Tweets helps me nourish relationships I care about, and lets me process and express ideas I want to share. At its best, Twitter — and other networks like it — makes me more present in my life, not less.
– Alexandra Samuel on A More Meaningful Twitter Experience with Groups. I’ve always been at a lost of words when non-techie friends ask me why I use the service and this has to be the most genuine answer ever for it. I don’t mind using this line. -
Separate Twitter Apps
Unknowingly I seemed to have established a framework for how I handle my participation on Twitter. The biggest thing to remember about the service is that it’s a tool for strengthening our communication and not bringing on more confusion to try to keep up with everything that happens.
At first glance it may seem contradictory that I have several Twitter Apps installed but they each serve a distinctive purpose that maintain sanity in my involvement with the service.
Twitter Apps I Use
- Tweetie 2 - Just recently upgraded from Tweetie 1 and this is the dominant App responsible for any form of Twitter interaction you can think of. It’s just beautifuly designed, super fast and it’s the epitome of what a Twitter experience should be like.
- BirdBrain - I turned off email notifications to track new followers and now rely on this App to brief me more on them as well as controlling spammers.
- Birdhouse - Indespensible App that literally contains a litany of Tweets that may or may not see the light of day as well as pre-written content that I intend on publishing when the day comes.
- Twitbit - Another well-designed Twitter client but I have to admit that I don’t publish much content from it but what justifies its presence is the push-notification feature that I enjoy. It works perfectly and any mentions that I get, I launch Tweetie to reply to them.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had just one App that accomplished all of these functions? With the exception of push-notification intergration in all Twitter clients, my answer to the question would be no.
Too many features just equals too many problems, which leads to cluckiness which later leads to forsaking a product that sounds appealing to use in theory but not in reality. I love having separate Apps that excel in one function only.
Features sell but if they get in the way of making them work for you, it defeats the purpose saying you have a product that does everything.
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Twitter Blocking →
The majority of my Twitter participation takes place via Tweetie for both the desktop and iPhone but very often I visit people’s official page to gain an idea of what their contribution to the service looks like.
In the past month, I’ve gain a significant amount of followers, all of which I’ve welcomed because we each enjoy the casual ego boost but have you ever personally taken the time to see why the interest in you to begin with? For some I’m completely honored that they do follow me but for others I share Mantia’s grading as to whether these are true Twitizens:
If they follow less than 200 people, I generally let it go. If they follow more than 200 people, I look at who else they’re following and what they tweet about. If they seem to be following people like me (artists, designers, Mac/iPhone geeks) and I see that they’re interested in those topics, I let them continue following me. If they don’t follow people like me and don’t tweet similar topics, I begin to wonder why they chose to follow me.
I’ve never used the blocking feature on Twitter before. I can see why for some that wouldn’t be an option judging in how that would lower their follower count but for me that’s not a ranking I care about. I have personal friends who joined the service and follow me but I generally don’t reciprocate the favor because that’s why I have Facebook for.
As huge as the “artists, designers and Mac/iPhone geek” community is, I enjoy feeling part of what seems like a small niche by regulating the people that follow me and vice versa and if blocking a few here and there is what it takes to keep that, then so be it.
