Twitter Limits to 2000 Follows – What are your Thoughts?

HKW — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:30:36 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of Twitter for a long while. Robert Scoble and Tim Ferriss both sort of inspired me to get an account. I then discovered a bunch of useful ways to use the site (for another post).

In the process, I also found it to be one of the coolest ways to update news or discover user driven information. It’s also a great way for me to let friends know of any cool things I come across. Twitter if used correctly gives a great signal ratio.

But just as experimental a tool I believe it is, I am also still in a rather experimental stage with Twitter. From following 0 people to following as many as I can. From writing about my daily routines to pushing my comfort zone, and sharing any thoughts or cool things off the top of my head, and in sharing my (very new and recent) blog with the world.

And it just occured to me just yesterday that Twitter has limied accounts to following 2,000 people unless previous to the switch, you were following more than 2000 people. In my opinion, this is trying to jam water pouring out of a bucket with a sponge. They are dealing with it is no better than the way the UK
government tries to stop knife crime by increasing prison setences,
instead of dealing with the teenager issues at heart.

Now I understand that they may want to limit the number of spam and marketers and all that. People who simply follow loads of people and offer no value in return
IMO are RETARDED. But I believe there are definitely genuine people
who want to offer value. But the way I see it, following someone is not exactly spam. Cutting down on how many people you can follow is not dealing with the issue of spam. I follow lots of people because it allows me to experiment with information flow. If people follow me back because they find what I write interesting, great. If they don’t, I don’t really give a shit.

Now I get the issue with ‘information overflow’. In fact, it’s probably impossible to follow beyond 1000 people, let alone 2000. But the way I see it, Twitter is a dynamic platform that allows you to discover information. So by using a combination of 3rd party tools such as Quotably.com and FriendFeed.Com, and tools like Summize/Twitter search. I don’t really use the web interface itself. My updates are automatically sent from either my Twitterbar in Firefox or Twitter Tools in my blog to both Twitter and to Facebook.

Scoble has actually been a big advocate of following more people than
having followers, and I have started to see his point. It used to be
that I think having lots of followers is the way forward. From a
marketing point of view, sure, but from a social information web 2.0
perspective, just as Facebook is a way for YOU to keep updated on what
your friends are up to (for example I know a few people on facebook
that are following my blog.. and I know who you are so don’t try to
hide ;)) and Twitter in the same regard is more useful. I follow @breakingnewson – which sends me breaking news updates faster than any news I can read or watch. And following loads of people doesn’t actually hurt me. As long as I find u interesting, I am happy to have you in my stream. I obviously don’t read it all the time, but there are more than 2000 interesting people in the world. By following interesting people and using a combination of filters, I do usually get alot of value out of it.

I guess the point I’m making is, Twitter is sort of trying to jam the issue of spammers without really fixing the problem. They have lags, crashses, and lots of problems. I still consider Twitter to be a beta program. So Twitter, pls fix all that stuff before trying to block a problem without really addressing it.

Ok rant over…. what are your thoughts on this? Do write a comment!

Finally, you can follow me on Twitter here

Hong Kong Wong » Twitter Tutorial

Twitter Limits to 2000 Follows – What are your Thoughts?

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