Posted on June 12th, 2009 by Tim Danton

Exactly how many people can you really follow on Twitter?

I’m sure I can’t be alone in having a passionate love/hate relationship with Twitter. I steered clear of it for a long time, believing it to be a timesink and unwelcome distraction to my already communication-filled life. And now that I have joined the throng – as has PC Pro via @pc_pro – I haven’t really moved away from that point of view.

The problem is that the stream of information moves so fast. Even using the quite impressive TweetDeck, I find it impossible to keep track of the endless streams of communications happening. And the thing is, it’s not that I don’t want to hear what the likes of Jack Schofield at The Guardian have to say, but, well, he says so much! As do the numerous other friends, colleagues, influencers and publications that I follow.

Yes, splitting the people you follow into groups will help – so if you just want to hear what friends are saying, then you create that group and add true friends to it – but this in itself is just stuffing the problem under the carpet in the vague hope no-one’s going to vacuum there. Say you create three or four groups. Are you really going to follow what they’re saying?

The truth is that many people – and obviously no readers of this blog, because we’re all so very wise and self-effacing and rounded as human beings – add many individuals who in fact we have little interest in following, in the hope that they’ll follow us and then make our numbers look good.

We then create those groups in TweetDeck, never to look at the “All Friends” stream ever again. And so I come to the question I pose in the title of this blog: exactly how many people can you really, truly follow on Twitter?

I’d say a realistic figure, unless you decide to dedicate your working hours to this device, is 50. And that’s incorporating a fair number of occasional Tweeters rather than the chain Tweeters of this world.

But, I’m willing to admit, I may be wrong. Or just anti-social. If you have time between all those Tweets you need to make, let me know how many people you follow on Twitter… and how many you really care about.

Tags: friends, social networks, TweetDeck, Twitter

Posted in: Rant, Software

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9 Responses to “ Exactly how many people can you really follow on Twitter? ”

Dave Marchant Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
50 seems about right if you really want to follow what they are saying. I have 36 at present and that is after only 4 weeks on Twitter. Most are news sites as it stops me having to have a load of web browser tabs hooked to the individual sites, but have found a few gems for travel updates.
Patrick Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I don’t use Twitter at all for this reason but have noticed exactly the same issue with Flickr – peope signing up hundreds of contacts in the (usually vain) hope that these people will look at and comment on their photographs. I currently have 28 contacts and will soon be ‘weeding out’ those who do not comment on my photographs so that I can continue to spend my time commenting those people who understand quid pro quo.
For anyone who might be interested my photostream is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcdonnell/ and I welcome your comments and will recriprocate.
Mark Reckons Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Maybe I’m odd but I don’t use Twitter like that. I don’t expect to be able to follow everything that all the people I follow tweet. Instead I dip in and out of it and just catch up with the most recent tweets.

Following 50 twitterers wouldn’t be enough for me because I tend to use Twitter to catch up with events in real time and get views of others on things. I currently follow about 300 but even that probably isn’t enough for my purposes so I will keep carefully selecting people to follow and adding them until I get to the point where I am getting enough tweets!
Rhidian Thomas Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I think the question is wrong. It should read “Exactly how many people do you want to follow on Twitter?”

I think it’s going to be another one of those “Web 2.0″ apps that- once people realise 95% of it is full of boring useless junk- the appeal will diminish massively as people start questining

I’m interested in Dave Marchant’s comment; why not just use a decent RSS app ? That way, you don’t need to open an account anywhere, and the feeds will be just as fast.

As far as I’m concerned, Web 2.0 follows on neatly from various reality TV shows that have sprung up over the past 10-15 years; it’s all about 1.5 billion people hoping desperately to be “the next big thing” for 10 seconds. Except that- unlike TV- you can just sit in front of your PC and assume that the other 1.499999 billion internet users MUST be interested in what you have to say. (There may be a strong cynical streak running through me).
Rhidian Thomas Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
questining ? I meant.. questioning what they’ve been doing since joining twitbook.
Ian Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Tim, I think you’re on the money: I’m following 45 people at the time of typing and I’m averaging about 100 updates every 18 hours in the all friends column, it’s manageable but only if checked 3 times a day.

The beauty of Tweetdeck is that you can reply/receive replies to people you’re not following, even if they’re following you… which makes it easy to not follow everyone.
Ian Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Rhidian: don’t agree. It’ll be when Twitter decides that it needs to change it’s model, like Facebook did when it decided that opening up its API was a good idea for “applications”…. then got complaints for people adding 100’s, so redesigned th entire profile page… then received 100X more complaints.
Danile Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
“The truth is that many people add many individuals who in fact we have little interest in following, in the hope that they’ll follow us and then make our numbers look good.”

This is the definition of a fulfilling life these days. Sigh.

*Dons cardigan, lights pipe and leaves*
Simon Barker Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
I think it really depends how you want to use Twitter, also I do find Tweetdeck helps hugely in how you decide to use it.

Personally I’m following about 400 people and am not that bothered about seeing all tweets being made, just those that have been happening in the last few hours – I find that topic stories tend to be repeated beyond a few hours anyway, so as long as you check it at some point during the day, you’ll pick up on the good stuff – but ultimately depends WHO you follow!

I have a personal rule that I don’t follow accounts that churn out loads of tweets daily through automated means as it creates far too much “noise” in my Twitter stream.