Actually, You CAN Follow Thousands on Twitter

It’s quite topical at the moment as several big name bloggers have been writing about how they’re cutting out followers, and pretty much every site I visit has comments on it like “I want meaningful relationships on Twitter, so I only follow 200.” Lots of people seem to have got into their heads that you need to keep your followers numbers low to have those “authentic” relationships. Well sorry, but that isn’t true.

There are three things you should consider when deciding how many people you can comfortably follow on Twitter:

1/ Twitter is not an IM service

2/ Tools like Tweetdeck allow you to sort tweets

3/ Less than 10% of the people you follow are online and Tweeting at any given moment

Let’s look at each of those in some more detail:

Twitter is not an IM service

You don’t have to see every tweet! If they are general tweets out to the world, then it doesn’t matter if you miss them. The cocktail party analogy has been done to death, but you don’t hear every conversation between other people at a cocktail party and nor should you on Twitter. All you need to do is scan them when it suits you to do so, and pick out the ones that are interesting, which is basically what you do when you’re circulating at a cocktail party.

Tools like Tweetdeck allow you to sort Tweets

There are some people whose Tweets you will never want to miss, so all you have to do is sort them into groups. I have one for each business and one for good friends, so I never miss those Tweets. Even following a total of 7,500 people my “All Friends” column never updates with more than around 60 tweets, and if I have time, I do scan each, and often start a meaningful conversation from there. My group columns are easy to keep up with as each time Tweetdeck updates, I never see more than 4 or 5 Tweets added.

Less than 10% of the people you follow are online and Tweeting at any given moment

I have to admit I’ve made this figure up, but I suspect it may be quite an accurate guess, and there’s some logic to the assumption. The bottom line is that only a small percentage of the people you follow are ever going to be online and working on twitter right now. I’m never at the cocktail party with 7,500 people – it’s more like a few hundred! And I can cope with that.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt that people who follow ten times my number do have some problems, but the point I’m making is that it really isn’t hard to follow and be followed by 7000 to 8000 people, and I’m sure many of the people I interact with would back me up to say that we do have interesting and diverse conversations. With a bit of organization it can be done, and I suspect with considerably more people as well. I’ll keep you posted and will tell you when it starts to be a problem!

But I’m really interested in what you think, am I right about this, or am I barking up the wrong twee?

Other stuff I’ve written about Twitter:

1/ Multiple accounts on Twitter? Not for me.

2/ The Beginner’s guide to Twitter

3/ Eight things I love about Twitter