DISQUS

Jim "Genuine" Turner · 1 year ago

I suppose since you are looking for Genuine relationships you are following @Genuine on Twitter? Great post about drinking from the Twitter firehose.

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Thank you Jim - yes, I am following @Genuine in fact. :-)

Brent · 1 year ago

Great collection of tools, Louis! Thank you.

While my Twitter circle remains small, I also find that I don't read everything, and that that's okay. My friends know that I don't catch everything, and if they need to tell me something critical, Twitter's not the place.

Mitch · 1 year ago

Louis?


Honestly, does _anyone_ at this point need to justify not reading everything that comes across their reader/friendfeed/twitter stream? Has anyone ever needed to justify it?

Hugh Briss · 1 year ago

Everyone has 1000 real life friends? Wow, I feel like such a loser all of a sudden. Either that or you're nuts and I think I'm going to go with choice #2. ;-)

Jesse Stay · 1 year ago

Think of all the people you have come in contact with throughout your life. Social Media brings all that back to the present, whether you like it or not. I'm willing to bet that comes close to 1,000.

Hugh Briss · 1 year ago

The thing is that I don't call everyone I ever met a friend and I also don't follow what those "acquaintances" do either. I follow a lot of people on Twitter so I'm not saying it's not possible or worthwhile, I'm just disagreeing with the analogy.

Joe Bachana · 1 year ago

Nice job Jesse. I was on the fence about TweetDeck until now, but have downloaded it and am trying it out.

miketempleton · 1 year ago

This post will probably push me over the edge as well. I find my follower counts growing rapidly, and they are people I want to follow, but there is a core group inside of that I feel I REALLY need to pay attention to. Sounds like TweetDeck is the answer to that problem.

Mark Krynsky · 1 year ago

Great tips Jesse. The scary thing is that my Twitter & FriendFeed workflow is already the same as yours. Up until recently I was a Twhirl user, but the minute someone showed me groups in TweetDeck, I was sold. These are great tips and I find them to work great for me.

The Lovable Rogue · 11 months ago

Hey Jesse. Interesting insight, but I'm not sure that I agree. Whilst I absolutely agree that social media in its entirety is about building relationships, can you ever really create a meaningful relationship with upwards of 1000 people? I'm dubious. The content that these users create on Twitter would, as you correctly highlight, prove near impossible to keep on top of.

For me, I don't think it is a case of politeness. The value of Twitter in my perspective stems from those I follow, hence I take great care in selecting only those from whom I feel I can benefit. Admittedly this may mean that on occasion I miss out on a golden nugget, but then surely this is no different from simply overlooking the nugget as one of thousands of posts which pass through your 1000 strong list of followers daily. Essentially, if there is something that a user specifically wants you to hear they will @reply you. The decision to stop following me by someone that no longer considers me to add value for them is therefore entirely understandable.

Admittedly, the number of new followers I receive daily remains manageable at present, however were this to increase, I am certain that my attitude would remain the same. We need a degree of refinement to ensure that we benefit most from the platform.

TLR

Jesse Stay · 11 months ago

TLR, when you have tools like TweetDeck and others to allow you to track those you want to pay attention to, it's to your benefit to just follow those that follow you. It can't hurt, and will only help. Even if you can't pay attention to every single person you follow (who initially followed you), each of them can DM you, each of them knows you followed them, and while that's not the fullest of relationships, it is still a connection that would not have been made otherwise. Add to that the potential golden nugget factor, you can't go wrong following those that follow you. I promise you'll see much more success this way.

Louis Gray · 11 months ago

The concept that "Who you follow on Twitter" derives value is one
often repeated. But it's highly likely that even among your hand-
selected followed, a good percentage of their updates are useless to
you. That's why, to me, the Twitter search page has more value than
the main Twitter Web site itself. TweetDeck also makes this true. Do I
read your tweets? No. Might I see them in FriendFeed? Yes. But there's
no value in taping one's eyes open and staring at the Twitter flood.