My Twitter theme song is: Follow You Follow Me.
I do my level best to follow around as many people in terms of sheer numbers, as follow me. It's a relatively normal balance which promotes increasing your followers and keeping in the loop. Once I passed following more than just a few people, I had to move to using the Web instead of just the phone. Once I moved past following a few hundred people, I had to move to using an app.
I chose TweetDeck to start with. These applications can quickly run out of API calls and stop updating once you follow several hundred (or more) people and once you are followed by that many people as well. The more activity you see, the more these apps will stop updating. I currently use a combination of TweetDeck and the plain-Jane Twitter Web UI. I move to the mobile when I need all the noise to cease.
Therein lies the rub: Noise. Noise in the form of Blog RSS, and 15 headlines of essentially the same story is annoying enough. Tweets are nearly all original and they come at you fast, at a rapid-fire pace. So, I follow far fewer people to my mobile. I'm still alerted to the core small set I follow to the phone. The only recourse from being utterly distracted while you are engaging online, is trimming the people you follow for noise reduction.
Luckily, there are Twitter apps coming online pretty quickly to catch the wave of excitement. One I recently used thanks to a Tweet tip from: @jeffbentley and @studawg is called Gives-a-Twit. I have a suggestion for them from my first use. The concept is straight forward: See who you follow that don't follow you back.
It's nice to see the collected avatars and their follow stats for judging what to do. It's a great noise reduction device, Twitter-style. That means, you can stop following those who don't follow back, have only a few followers themselves, or otherwise you don't recognize because they don't Tweet enough. What I found a really great relief is that using the service does *not* require the use of your Twitter password. It's just useful all its own.
Why clutter your Twitter stuff? If they happen to be someone you recognize as someone that Tweets fairly often, if their Tweets aren't really that impressive, that can help you reduce Twitter noise. Reducing noise helps reduce API calls with your favorite application, and really it helps you follow more interesting people with the extra mind space.
I love finding interesting new people and 'virtually' meeting them through Twitter. It's really fun, so it's a dangerous time suck if you don't reduce the noise. Get a handle on your Twitter. Here comes my tip for Gives-a-Twit: I recommend not setting up a Tweet ready to send that says in affect "I follow you, and you don't follow me."
That's not exactly a message that says anything but "I resent that I'm following you, and don't you have the common decency to..." Aw well. It wouldn't work anyway. And I would find it fairly annoying if I got a message like that myself. Instead, a simple link to the user profile allows me to do what I did with the service.
I determined whether the follow was worth it or not. There are many reasons I follow people that don't follow me back. Matt Cutts doesn't follow me. The thing is, he allowed me to follow him while he protected his feed. That's good enough reason for me, and his Tweets are worth it to boot (I mean: follow). I don't stop following people I solicited to follow in the first place. I follow people that are interesting.
What I was able to accomplish, was stop following 16 people that were just not doing it for me. As of this writing, I now follow 650 people (that's right, it previously added to 666). I have 739 who follow me. It's a good balance and I've been actively growing my base since last Valentine's Day. It will be interesting if I can keep up following as my follower numbers grow. It will be interesting to see what apps I think helps me sort it all out.
Stay tuned. Follow me @AirDisa today!
I do my level best to follow around as many people in terms of sheer numbers, as follow me. It's a relatively normal balance which promotes increasing your followers and keeping in the loop. Once I passed following more than just a few people, I had to move to using the Web instead of just the phone. Once I moved past following a few hundred people, I had to move to using an app.
I chose TweetDeck to start with. These applications can quickly run out of API calls and stop updating once you follow several hundred (or more) people and once you are followed by that many people as well. The more activity you see, the more these apps will stop updating. I currently use a combination of TweetDeck and the plain-Jane Twitter Web UI. I move to the mobile when I need all the noise to cease.
Therein lies the rub: Noise. Noise in the form of Blog RSS, and 15 headlines of essentially the same story is annoying enough. Tweets are nearly all original and they come at you fast, at a rapid-fire pace. So, I follow far fewer people to my mobile. I'm still alerted to the core small set I follow to the phone. The only recourse from being utterly distracted while you are engaging online, is trimming the people you follow for noise reduction.
Luckily, there are Twitter apps coming online pretty quickly to catch the wave of excitement. One I recently used thanks to a Tweet tip from: @jeffbentley and @studawg is called Gives-a-Twit. I have a suggestion for them from my first use. The concept is straight forward: See who you follow that don't follow you back.
It's nice to see the collected avatars and their follow stats for judging what to do. It's a great noise reduction device, Twitter-style. That means, you can stop following those who don't follow back, have only a few followers themselves, or otherwise you don't recognize because they don't Tweet enough. What I found a really great relief is that using the service does *not* require the use of your Twitter password. It's just useful all its own.
Why clutter your Twitter stuff? If they happen to be someone you recognize as someone that Tweets fairly often, if their Tweets aren't really that impressive, that can help you reduce Twitter noise. Reducing noise helps reduce API calls with your favorite application, and really it helps you follow more interesting people with the extra mind space.
I love finding interesting new people and 'virtually' meeting them through Twitter. It's really fun, so it's a dangerous time suck if you don't reduce the noise. Get a handle on your Twitter. Here comes my tip for Gives-a-Twit: I recommend not setting up a Tweet ready to send that says in affect "I follow you, and you don't follow me."
That's not exactly a message that says anything but "I resent that I'm following you, and don't you have the common decency to..." Aw well. It wouldn't work anyway. And I would find it fairly annoying if I got a message like that myself. Instead, a simple link to the user profile allows me to do what I did with the service.
I determined whether the follow was worth it or not. There are many reasons I follow people that don't follow me back. Matt Cutts doesn't follow me. The thing is, he allowed me to follow him while he protected his feed. That's good enough reason for me, and his Tweets are worth it to boot (I mean: follow). I don't stop following people I solicited to follow in the first place. I follow people that are interesting.
What I was able to accomplish, was stop following 16 people that were just not doing it for me. As of this writing, I now follow 650 people (that's right, it previously added to 666). I have 739 who follow me. It's a good balance and I've been actively growing my base since last Valentine's Day. It will be interesting if I can keep up following as my follower numbers grow. It will be interesting to see what apps I think helps me sort it all out.
Stay tuned. Follow me @AirDisa today!
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