Heya, Nice post!

We have just implemented twitter at our school for 13-19 year old’s. – http://twitter.com/gcus it gives out information and notices etc.

In regards to the 150 rule, I believe that you can be in ‘contact’ with too many people, in the end, for example, your twitter home page will just constantly update and you would not be able to see what you actually want to, does that make sense?

Interesting. I would not have read this post unless I had been in twitter. Microblogging is a whole new ballgame, not just a new set of rules for blogging. Not sure about the maths but I understand statistics: numbers rarely stand up on their own. So many variables so many adaptations. Twitter is a great concept, so simple and so powerful. I am enjoying reading what other professionals write,from the USA to London and further afield. It reminds me of the buzz I got when I first started collecting stamps from around the world at age 8. Yes, you gussed it I’m a Geographer! Got twitter will travel.

Andrew, re Twitter numbers.

Yes, I think we can follow too many people, and suspect I do.

Because of this, I sometimes miss a lot of good and useful tweets, swamped by the trivia, ego-trips, inanities and vanities that ‘can’, ahem; litter Twitter.

The voices we want to hear can be lost and drowned by the sheer volume of tweets.

(Indeed, I pride myself on having written a fair few inane tweets in my time at ‘The Fail Whale Academy’, but do think that trivia is in the eye of the beholder, but that’s for another post.)

I have a totally unscientific, un-researched, anecdotal, lick-your-finger-and-stick-it-in-the-air ‘follow’ number, I’d like to suggest:

200-500.

There, I’ve said it, not too many, not too few.

I think the users of twitter who still don’t ‘get it’ are probably following low double digit numbers. Not enough to be useful in my book. Not enough to guarantee some of the wonderful serendipity of Twitter when right-minded folk set information free to see where it goes and who’ll pick it up. (As for those other Twitter-bashers who never actually used it, but nevertheless feel qualified to dismiss it as vanity publishing.)

Of course, judgement is also critical in who you follow, a few good ‘uns will beat masses of waffling bad ‘uns every time. So 75 top class tweeters can be a more powerful/useful voice than the massed choir of 1250 haven’t a clue merchants.

But I digress.

What’s needed most are a more granular set of tools, and protocols built into Twitter, so we can group those who we follow. So we can mamage the follow and have safety nets for the gems that might be lost to us.

(The fact that gems would still fall through a net is a hole in my metaphor, I’m too tired to fix right now, but I think you get my drift, (net).

Creating groups in TweetDeck is a partial solution, but is not quite the ticket.

Actually I don’t have a solution, I was going to talk about ‘connectedness’ and degrees of separation, ala LinkedIn, but couldn’t make the argument work or the example stick.

I realise this is a very rambly response, and actually not a particularly valuable comment.

So I’ll sign off for now.

Ruefully wondering if I might have been better to reply in 140 characters or less.

A thing to think about. I think the primary thing we need to do is MANAGE our followers. If we have to many people who post often with uninteresting comments we might want to consider not following those people anymore. I like the people who post useful websites, and have interesting public conversations, but still, more controls DO need to be in place with Twitter and applications used.

For example, the people I follow can, and do, have very long strings of multi-vector conversations. In order to follow these conversations I need to trawl through a large number of tweets. This shows the problem with the 200 Tweet limit I have with one of the applications I use.

Personally, I think if we had better management tools we would be able to manage. But as for how many people are two many people? I’ll tell you when I reach that figure, currently 77 (only 77?)

The vanity thing does strike a chord. I never knew so many people worked outrageous hours, slaved over demanding courses or regularly performed feats of travelling heroism until I discovered Twitter. Must go and burn some midnight oil now.

There is something in this debate and particularly in some of the comments that follow the post that makes me uneasy but I can’t quite articulate it. Maybe I’m just being an old hippy but I am worried that moves to exercise control (as opposed to just employing a personal and natural filtering process) will feel to some like the setting of a minimum standards.

If I joined Twitter and folk signed up to follow me – and they then ‘unfollowed’ me 2 weeks later – what would that say to me? That I wasn’t interesting enough? That I had disappointed them?

I like Twitter because I can keep in touch with friends, family AND work colleagues. I prefer it to Yammer because I can catch everyone I’m interested in in the one place and link into deeper communication with them whenever and however I choose. I also don’t have to think too hard about what I’m tweeting about as I find I do on Yammer because I don’t have to be work-related all the time and I don’t have to be ‘deep’. And because it is a one-stop broadcast service, some of my comments are pretty banal – to some – and hard to follow – for others – and probably a bit pretentious/nerdy – to another group. Because I’m ‘broadcasting’ rather than communicating on a one to one basis. (for this idea expressed far more eloquently, I would refer you to Here Comes Everybody and the chapter Publish then Filter).

For Twitter to be truly influential and encourage learning it has to be an environment that newcomers can feel comfortable in and able to make rookie mistakes. And they are going to need to feel that people are genuinely interested in what they have to say and to receive encouraging feedback before they start to reveal the interesting stuff.

I suspect that by then many of the founder members of Twitter will have moved on, not just because they no longer feel exclusive (although I think that will play a part)but because there will be too much ambient or white noise on that frequency and they will have found a new channel by then.

I realise there has been a bit of a move away from the whole “How many followers” question here but it’s an interesting debate about setting standards in broadcasting environments so I hope you will indulge me.

I’ve been thinking some more about your original question Andrew. Coincidentally the Yahoo Group Emint (for managers and facilitators of online communities) have been discussing Twitter recently and lots of good references and guides have been contributed. Here’s a post of from member which particularly stresses the community aspect.

“I focussed more on who I wanted to talk to and have listen to me, then started posting stuff I think is interesting or useful for those people. I started retweeting, it’s a generous thing to do and helps integrate you into the party. Also, you get to ride on the back of someone else’s bon mot, interesting idea etc. RTing is Very Good.

I still headline our news but try and make it conversationally interesting. I follow people who I think have a great tweeting style, to learn tips. I put people I’m interested in into groups on tweetdeck and read just about everything they tweet, I leave people I want in my tribe but who are currently doing boring tweets “just off to get the train!” in my ‘all friends’ folder and review it often. I use direct message to have personal, private conversations – but not always, sometimes I want to show off a bit about the conversation.

I want to build a network and am getting c5-10 new people a day. I’m sure there are many more learning stages I’ll go through, but these things seem to be working for me now.”

- Caroline Bottomley -www.RadarMusicVideos.com – http://www.twitter.com/radarmusicvideo

I have followed Caroline’s advice a bit today: – installed Tweetdeck; followed a lot more folk and posted my Twitter id a little more widely. I will report back on what I feel an optimum member is/was in due course!

I constantly remove people from my list, simply because I become bored with their tweets – and yes, they fill up my page and I miss tweets I want to see. I find I start following someone for a reason – like a live feed to the Gaza destruction – and then drop them when they move on to other agendas. Dead fickle, really!