David Eckoff: On Innovation, New Media, and More - Latest Comments in The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Ricardo Bueno — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:22:19 -0000

I twitter under my name. I follow somewhere around 540 people but find that the conversation often centers around a much smaller group (I'm never speaking to all 500+ people. It's always the same few that are active in the conversation and to whom we DM each other back and forth).

I do use twitter as somewhat of a broadcasting tool for my blog and that's worked well in terms of attracting new readership for my blog.

Anyway, in answering how many people is an ideal number to follow...not sure I have an ideal number. Generally speaking I follow anyone who has somehow sparked my interest in some way, shape or form at some point. From then on, it becomes a matter of "let's see where the conversation takes us."

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

davideckoff — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:22:04 -0000

Nick, thanks for your comment, and thank you for reading my blog.

To answer your question, as I understand it, Twitter's system should not prevent you from following more than 2,000 people.

For example, Robert Scoble currently follows more than 21,000 people (http://twitter.com/scobleizer) and Chris Brogan currently follows more than 10,000 people and Jeff Pulver currently follows more than 4,500 people.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Nick Stamoulis — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:42:58 -0000

I reached a max at following 2,000 people...their system will not let me follow any more people...is this the max number?

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Kai Davis — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:15:36 -0000

That was supposed to be in response to Jon G. Sorry!

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Kai Davis — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:04:09 -0000

I don't think that there is a maximum limit for twitter contacts. Dunbar's number is defined for stable social relationships, while twitter straddles the area between 'friends' and 'listening in on a noisy party'. I follow some real life friends on Twitter. I also follow bloggers who I like, people with interesting posts, and aggregations of tech news. Very rarely do I need to read their tweets. If I spend a day off of twitter, I don't need to go through and read every tweet from the past 24 hours like I would for emails or phone calls.

I think the idea that Dunbar's number would impose some sort of natural limit on Twitter followers is erroneous because Twitter isn't for stable social connections. Twitter is the finger on the pulse of the tech community. Twitter is a human RSS feed. Twitter can also be for social connections, but more often than not those connections are established and maintained through another medium - face to face, phone calls, AIM, email.

When there compelling things or personal communication, it will come through another medium.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

NinjaKai — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:55:04 -0000

Gapingvoid came back to the service, andrew pulled the auction stating that too many spammers were bidding on it and he didn't want to damage his followers like that.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

davideckoff — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:14:59 -0000

Hey Lance, thanks for reading and commenting, much appreciated.

I agree with you, it bugs me when people use Twitter as a 1:1 instant messaging service. The "@" feature is great, but for an extended conversation between two people, I'd rather people take that off Twitter and onto AIM.

The funny thing is each person seems to have their own set of "rules" for what they like and don't like in the tweets they follow. Makes me think I should write a blog post on my twitter likes and dislikes.

PS... I still can't believe you slept in a box car!

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

davideckoff — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:09:07 -0000

Mary-Lynn, thanks for reading my blog and for commenting.

I remember that day telling you about Twitter and glad to see you using the service.

I super happy to see your show Bigg Success go from idea to reality.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

lance — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:41:37 -0000

I try and keep the number I follow in the 100 range, coming off of a previous hard stop at that number. I find myself getting rid of folks that use it as a personal/public IM system and those that somehow lose site of the fact that the 140 character limit is there for a reason and that seven 140 tweets in a row should really be a referenced blog post.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Mary-Lynn — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:32:15 -0000

Just had to comment since YOU, Dave, are the reason I’m even on Twitter. You introduced it to me at PME07…and I’ve never looked back!

I don’t mind following a bunch of people, even though it is impossible to keep up with everyone. I like that everyday, I catch different conversations.

I can always go to a particular friends page directly to catch up on their latest posts if I keep missing them.

I told my sister @newspicture about Twitter and she’s hooked too. We’ll even have twitter conversations on the phone. She’ll tell me about twitter posts she saw that I missed, and I’ll do the same for her. Yes…we twitter tag team!

Feel free to follow me @marylynn3.

Mary-Lynn
Bigg Success

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Jon Gatrell — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:13:10 -0000

dilemma or a new market? @gapingvoid quit, andrew baron is selling his account and just the mention by scoble creates almost 100 followers. The continued fragmentation of identity and the conversation is interesting, so minimally it is an cool dilemma. http://tinyurl.com/5aek96

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

davideckoff — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:48:03 -0000

Update: If you're looking for group tweet functionality, you might want to check out this new service: http://grouptweet.com/

(Between GroupTweet and TwitPic, 2 of the 3 main capabilities I wanted are now easy. The third for me is a subset of my favorites called "favorite people I'm following".)

From GroupTweet's website:

GroupTweet piggy-backs on the Twitter service via the Twitter API. Setting up a Twitter group is simple:

1. Create a Twitter account for you group (e.g. initechwebdevs or smithfamily). If you want to make this a private group, make sure that updates are protected in the settings.

2. Register your group's Twitter account at GroupTweet.com

3. Tell all group members to follow the group account you created at Twitter. (If updates are protected, you will need to approve each follow request)

4. To send a message to all the group members, just direct text your group's Twitter account. For example: 'D initechwebdevs Just committed the latest code to the repository'

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

davideckoff — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:10:56 -0000

Eric, glad that my blog post inspired you to think more about it and blog on your site.

You're one of my favorite people in the video podcast industry, thanks for reading my blog and for commenting.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

davideckoff — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:07:24 -0000

Extraface, thanks for reading and for posting you comment. Similar to you, I'm finding I prefer to have a relatively small group that I follow closely. But I would like to add more people that I follow now and then..

I initially thought about keeping my Twitter account protected, but decided that I wanted to have a Twitter badge on my blog (I wouldn't be able to do that with a protected account). And I also wanted to experiment with an open communication and collaboration environment, motivated in part by Tapscott (author of Wikinomics) and in part by @elsua who is an IBM'er who is doing an interesting experiment moving most of his comminication away from email and to open social media networks for more open questions (He blogs: [email should be] "a one-on-one communication tool to discuss and share information of a private, sensitive or confidential nature. For the rest, everything else should go into an online, public, open social software space where the conversation can certainly flourish much more profoundly than what you could do through e-mail." http://www.elsua.net/?s=giving up on e-mail

As a side note, when I worked at IBM in the early to mid 90's, ... if I ever were to have told my boss I wasn't going to do work email any more, I expect it wouldn't have gone over well with any of my managers. I think what @elsua is doing is hugely innovative for any company, and especially at a big company like IBM.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

Dave Coustan — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:23:08 -0000

I like keeping my account protected for that very reason. I've been able to curate a list of people who use twitter in ways compatible to mine, and who I like to keep up with, and that list has hovered between 200-300 people. For me personally, I don't see value in a massive jumble of people/free-for-all. And in general, if a new person requests to follow me, if their ratio of follower-to-followed isn't skewed heavily one way or the other, I accept their request and give them a try. I think the scobleizer/brogan approach is more of a brute force marketing strategy than a human communication channel.

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

eric : gardenfork.tv — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:02:38 -0000

David, what was going to be a short comment became a blog post that I wrote up.

http://ericrochow.com/2008/...

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

davideckoff — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:29:19 -0000

Shelbinator, you make a good observation about the need to selectively broadcast (to a group). That dovetails nicely with the concept of the need for selective reading. Thanks for posting your comment! - de

Re: The "Twitter Dilemma": How Many People Can You Follow?

shelbinator — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:08:10 -0000

Once again, another painful need for Twitter groups. We've already been longing for a way to selectively broadcast, but you highlight a need for selective reading as well. The only thing I've got to meet that purpose is the "SMS Updates" option, so that I can "courtesy follow" a lot more people than I read. And I can still scan a few pages back on the website to catch the tweets of more verbose twitterers that I want to keep out of my short attention span. But the problem with this approach is that my IM client or cellphone has to be on & logged in to get all the tweets from my "primaries."

I'm following 133 and am definitely approaching my attention threshold. If I go for 200 I'll never, ever graduate.