So there’s this fascinating service called Twitter. I won’t waste time trying to describe it, except to liken it to the world’s largest cocktail party. You — and the Twitter users who “follow” you, and the people whom you “follow” — are all assembled in one cavernous virtual ballroom, all with bullhorns, gabbing away. And the acoustics are so damned good here, you can hear every word everyone is broadcasting. It’s a helluva thing.
I love the service. I love the kind of instantaneous, worldwide, bite-sized communication it delivers. If you know Twitter and pause to think about what it does — bringing people of all types into a common experience where, in 140 characters or less, they can make friends, expose themselves to new creative work, and express themselves — it is thing worthy of awe.
The brilliance of Twitter is that it is “opt-in” all the way: You choose which people you want to “follow” — their communiques will be visable to you in your “tweetstream”. If you’re blessed enough to have people interested in “following” you and what you have to say, you can follow them back.
Following the natural logic, the worst-case Twitter scenario is that you have no followers, and you tweet into a void. Best-case scenario: You (and your friends) are awash in a stream of communication, back-and-forthing with conversation. It’s a hoot.
I was an early adopter of Twitter; my memory’s foggy here, but I believe I signed up for the free service before it became a monster meme at South By Southwest 2007. Not much was happening there at the time … but the thing caught on, friends came, chatter blossomed. The great Following began.
This was a good thing. It further lowered the barriers of communication between creative people. It was a far more direct avenue between me (a new media entertainer) and the folks who dig my work. It empowered me to talk “directly” to fans and vice-versa. Twitter is more immediate than email, and more convenient than messaging on Myspace/Facebook, or commenting on a blog. (In fact, I think Twitter is killing the art of blog commenting, but that’s the subject of another post.) Combine these facts with the understanding that on Twitter, everyone has deservedly equal conversational footing, and you have a mighty powerful form of free, nearly instantaneous communication.
During my first year of using Twitter, there was — and to a degree, still is — a pervasive popular philosophy of “Twitter karma.” The gist: If someone has put forth the effort and interest to follow you on Twitter, you respectfully return the favor. (There’s even a clever Twitter Karma service that allows you to manage such “following,” and a recent Twitter quasi-competitor called Plurk that incorporates this karma concept into its service.) It makes good sense, engenders goodwill and reciprocity, and levels the communication playing field. Accessibility is in. Gated community, begone.
I, like a great many folks on Twitter, followed everyone back. I benefitted from the relationships, made new friends, was exposed to brilliant creators, bloggers and fans. Twitter changed my life. It opened my eyes to a landscape of new media beyond the “ghetto” of podcasting (I do not use this word disparagingly; see this post for a better understanding), and has connected me to people whose work I admire beyond words.
And then more Twitter followers came. And more. At the time of this writing, I have more than 1,800 followers. This number is a drop in the bucket for more popular entertainers, but it’s significant, at least to me.
I continued to apply my personal rules of reciprocity and karma to Twitter, and followed a great many of these folks. Conversation thrived.
And as the months went on, more came. And more. And more.
Perhaps it’s my history with Twitter — and the memories of those early months when Twitter didn’t just feel like a small secret community, but by God, it was one — that influenced the way I’ve begun to recently view it. When you follow around 1,500 people and a great many of them are not connected to one another (but are connected to you), you are exposed to a flood of mostly-unrelated messages. There is no cohesion. Communication is happening, but it’s impossible to follow. The guest list of the world’s largest cocktail party has grown so large — and everyone’s voices can still be heard — that the result, for me, was a cocophany.
I hate myself for saying this, but it became noise.
Am I suggesting that the things people are saying now are any less significant than they were saying last year? Absolutely not. Perhaps there’s even more significance to what pours into the tweetstream these days, since its growing user base is using the service in more creative ways than ever. (Folks are tweeting fiction; they’re also using it as a platform to promote products or new creative endeavors. I do this relentlessly on Twitter.)
No, I’m saying that my personal experience began to sour. The messages being transmitted to my Twitterfic Twitter reader became too numerous to read, much less understand. The mostly-geniune and mostly-important conversation became an incomprehensible squall.
There are ways to cut through the noise — I call them Twitter “dog whistles” — and they come in the form of “@” replies (which show up in the public tweetstream) and “DMs” (direct messages, which only transmit to the intended recipient). These messages show up in special places on the Twitter site, or are are given special highlighted prominence in Twitter readers such as Twitterific. I enjoy receiving these messages, as they rise above the din and more easily get my attention. When appropriate, I reply in kind.
I hate admitting this, but for much of 2008, I’ve mostly been reading the “@” and “DM” messages directed at me, and not the unfolding conversation in the public ‘stream. The Twitter service may be scalable, but my attention couldn’t keep up. I began to hate the noise, and felt guilty for hating it.
There are tremendously talented folks in the space who manage Twitter accounts with thousands upon thousands of followers, and follow these folks back. I presume that either their attention is more scalable than mine, or they perceive and use Twitter differently than me.
There are also folks who have thousands upon thousands of followers, but rarely follow them back. For many a moon, I considered these brilliant creators — Wil Wheaton, Warren Ellis and Xeni Jardin to name a few — to be hypocrites. What, you’ll use this thing to communicate with fans, but you won’t connect with them on the level that Twitter was built for? I thought. You’ll stand atop your mountain and evangelize your cause, but won’t let people into your Ivory Tower? What bullshit.
But now I get it. It’s the noise, man. It’s all the fucking noise. If you can’t parse the communication, you can’t participate in the conversation in any useful, meaningful, way. To me, that defeats the philosophical intent of Twitter … or at least, the philosophy I project upon it.
And so, today, I conducted The Great Unfollowing. I examined the list of the nearly 1,500 people I was following, did some voodoo emotional math (which I won’t share here), and removed most of them from my “following” list. It was draconian. It was a slaughter.
I am now following less than 200 people. I am certain this decision has hurt some feelings, but I’ve best explained how I came to it, and why it was important to me to follow through with it.
Have I become one of the social media starfucker hipocrites I spent months sneering at? Yes. Have I removed myself from hundreds of lively conversations? Yes. Do I feel like an asshole, particularly since I’ve built a reputation for being a very down-to-earth, accessible entertainer? Yes.
Do I think that, given my awe for this service and things I love most about it, this was a necessary deed, a “red phone” option that would rejuvenate my interest and enjoyment of Twitter? Yes.
I’ve said on numerous occasions that Twitter is an ephemeral thing; its experience is as varied as the people using it. I’m changing how I use Twitter, so I can better experience it.
Interestingly, The Great Unfollowing doesn’t mean I’m any less accessible. Folks can still send me “@” replies (which I always appreciate, and repsond to, when appropriate), and thanks to Twitter’s robust search function, I recieve aggregated RSS reports of relevant tweets about me and my work. When appropriate, I reply to these tweets, too.
Jaded Twitter veterans — or less naive users — probably see this post as the confession of a noob. Others might read it as the manifesto of a philosophical sellout. I’m neither of these things. I simply realized that the cocktail party was now too popular and spectacular for me to fully appreciate. I am still tremendously grateful to the 1,800+ people who follow me, and understand how blessed I am to have people interested in what I have to say.
I’m still at the shindig, just chillin’ a little further from the bar and dance floor these days. Shout my name, though, and I’ll probably bound over like a happy puppy.
We’ll put down our bullhorns and talk for a while.
–J.C.
You’re not a hypocrite, Hutch. Reads like you’re just tuning your experience. And it is YOUR experience that matters when it’s you that has to deal with the stream. I’ve never understood how people can find a stream with thousands of people posting to it at one time useful, anyway. With hundreds and hundreds of posts per day unless you’re just sitting there reading your friend stream all day you probably only end up catching a small handful, and at those odds you’d be just as well off perusing the public timeline a few times a day.
So agonize no longer, warrior.
Can’t see an issue with this. From the start I’ve never auto followed folks who followed me. I’d look at their post list and if in the first page or two they had something that perked my interest, I followed them. Or if their listed website was interesting, etc.
I only casually use twitter myself, and while I like it, it is an issue keeping up with the less than 50 folks I have on my list.
Folks have a right to change their mind.
I can fully relate to what you write. It caused me to unfollow in a very early stage and always keep the numbers under 100.
The best days were when the IM service still worked. With the few people I follow, I was happy to get these signs of life. With more or with people who sent tweets every other second, it became noise. Just as you say. Sorry to repeat you, but I feel exactly the same
As one of the Great Unfollowed of 2008 I have to say it’s all good, man. I’m following you because I enjoy your work and you post some stuff that entertains me. Your logic is sound. Sometimes with the mere dozen or so people I’m following, there’s more than I’ve got time to keep up with. I can’t imagine with hundreds or thousands.
I think your making more out of this then you need to Hutch. I’ve always believed that people should use any and all social media tools in the way that works best for them.
I’ve never been able to follow everyone who follows me. I once had someone call me out at a conference about this and I explained that I follow people who I either know or that I really want to hear what they have to say. I constantly am adding and deleting people to try and keep some sort of balance between “the noise” and being a useful part of my life.
Do what works for you. Figure out which tools are best and use them. Want to change? Go for it.
Everyone needs to chill, enjoy and stop worrying about how everyone else is using things.
I think everyone on twitter reaches this point eventually (or hobbles together a semi-sentient system of scripts to parse the cacophony. I’ve been growing increasingly cautious following new people over the last few months because I’ve been sensing the nature of the conversation in my tweetstream changing, and I’m beginning to think that following 150-200 people is probably the best we mere humans can do and still be able to keep up with the people and conversations we want to track.
I’m with you on this, Hutch. I follow only those who’s recent tweets interest me, who know many of the same people I know, who are from the same area as me, or are in the same field. When the noise outweighs the signal, I pare back my follow list. My updates are protected and I do not automatically follow back people I allow to follow me. Some may say it’s rude, but that’s life in the big city.
First let me say, I represent the mainstream. Yes, JC you’ve gone mainstream and I think that bodes well for your upcoming publication. I am that soccer mom sweet spot that every marketer and politician loves to woo. I don’t know Klingon or Lynx (please insert pure envy for those who do). In fact, this is the first time I’ve responded to a blog post. I am as average Jane as you can get with the 2.5 kids and a house in the burbs. I found 7th Son by complete accident and had to read “Apple Help i-tunes” before downloading. Because of you and your wonderful 7th Son trilogy and your fantastic Ultra Creative interviews (please don’t stop doing them) I have found a whole new world. I subscribe to several podcasts and podiobooks. I’ve taken to saying “bad ass” a lot, with many giggles from earlier noted children (I am really worried what new vocabulary I am going to pick up from the Siegler book that I just downloaded).
I joined twitter because of all the talk on your podcasts. I am feeling my way around this new media and teaching my girlfriends all about it. I never expected to be followed back as I reached in and felt my way around the room. I mean what would you really get from an exchange about the new “Skinny Bitch” book? In fact, I am not sure what I get from that exchange. I have to assume I am not the only mainstream convert out there. I can imagine many, like myself, are just thrilled to follow you. Give yourself a guilt break and write, we’ll be just fine. Thank again for introducing me to new universes (fiction and otherwise).
I don’t think there should be an “social” obligation on Twitter or any similar process that should require one to add one’s followers.
As you said, doing so can lead to significant “noise”.
No worries, JC. I’ve always appreciated the fact that it matters to you to stay close to your following. You’ve immediately responded to the e-mails I’ve sent you over the past two years and that means a lot. It’s a given with your growing popularity (which will, no doubt, become astronomical soon) that you have to lose some of that personal touch. I will continue to follow you and hope if we’re ever in the ballroom at the same time, that I can throw you a bone and you, like the happy puppy that you are, will grace me with a few minutes of conversation.
Sam
J.C. -
You know, I’m glad you did this and made this post. I have not yet gotten to the point where hundreds of people are following me, but I definitely can see it becoming serious noise with 500 or 1000 or more people to follow. As you say, it’s not that they don’t have anything to offer, it’s that you are only human and you are unable to pay attention to that many tweets.
Given that people can still @ you, I think it makes a lot of sense. Give yourself a break. Only Kilroy 2.0 can be “everywhere”
It’s funny that you are posting this now. I am going through the exact problem you are going through. I realized last week that I was missing a number of tweets of people I really care about, such as my wife! This bothered me muchly and so I am going through and removing followers now , just like you mentioned.
I do not think this makes you a hypocrite. I think it makes you human. It was fun while it lasted, but it just becomes mostly unusable when you have that many people screaming through your head at any given time. You become like a telepath who has not learned to filter out the periphery.
So I do not think you have anything to feel bad about. YOU decide who YOU want to hear.. That’s the main strength of Twitter. Don’t beat yourself up for simply using the service at it’s main strength.
Its ok Hutch…I still love ya’ and the wounds will heal some day
…I expected to feel more hurt honestly but it makes great deal of sense and its not like we cant e-mail you.
You’re not a hypocrite at all JC. You answer your @’s (mostly) so you’ve got that going on. You’re still on Twitter. You make posts like this. It’s evident you care about your fans.
Anyone who doesn’t like it, like you said, the whole following thing is voluntary and they can unfollow you if it bothers them that much. And if it does bother them that much then you’re probably better off.
I think that it all depends on what you make of Twitter, LiveJournal, Myspace… blah, blah, blah.
All of those social networks seem to start off for us mere mortals as just that, social networks. I know that the people I started following on Twitter were others I’d met through our common interests. As I got involved in socializing with those people my network expanded as I dug into finding out about the other people they were communicating with.
My network grew.
As it stands, the podcast review show we do isn’t pulling down huge numbers, my tweet stream is manageable, and I can pretty much follow everyone who follows me. I’ve made a few exceptions for people who unintentionally spam the services with “I’m reading this article right now in my google reader” type messages.
I’m using this as a networking tool. As, I imagine, are a lot of people who are trying to promote a product or service.
There are those who come at it from a social aspect though. And in that respect, it might seem a slight if someone doesn’t follow them, or unfollows them.
It’s like the tree on Dagobah. You get out of it what you bring into it. If you turn it into a social tool and get your feelings behind it, you have to be prepared for those feelings to be hurt. If you are using it to network with your fans or those whom you are a fan of, you can’t expect that there is a huge emotional investment on both sides of that “relationship”.
As one of the un-followed, I can honestly say that I never really expected you to reciprocate my following of you. Your objective view outlined in this post probably should have been the approach from the beginning.
Twitter is not AIM. It is not a chat room. It is not email. It’s not a blog post. Twitter is a lot of things, but on a fundamental level, it is simply the constant answering of the question “What are you doing?” Those that care about your answer follow you.
I follow you because I’m interested in your answer. That alone doesn’t necessarily mean that you are interested in what I’m up to. I’m not a professional writer. The day you’re interested in what a twenty-something health care software analyst is doing, that’s when you would follow me.
Besides, it’s not like there aren’t already about 12 different ways to communicate with you if we need or want to. For that reason alone, I don’t feel that it makes you less accessible. If anything, it frees you up…removing the time constraints of sifting through clutter, leaving more time for the good stuff.
<1500?? Damn… talk about deafening, I can’t even imagine what that would be like. I say it’s all about getting the best use out of the tool. Truthfully, I only follow those that I have an interest in their updates and connecting with. Likewise, while I am honored when people reciprocate, I don’t expect anyone to follow me back. Trying to swim in the flood of too many tweets just seems counter productive to me. I say, more power to you for seeking out a Hutch friendly Twitter configuration.
If we (your fans) really need to say something to you there are plenty of other ways we can connect. It’s not like Twitter is the one and only means of connecting with folks.
The Unfollowing is just proof that you know your limits and are willing to make the necessary moves towards self preservation and away from burnout.
Your craft and your projects require your time and effort and having the wisdom to know when and where to use the effort means that the projects that you spend your time on will be all the better for it.
All these great comments leave me with little to add aside from repeating the germane points, but I’ll comment anyway.
Six months ago I might not have understood the reasoning behind what you had done. Now, I really do. Even at 150 followed, it can be very, very difficult to keep up with conversations at Twitter. At 1,000 or more, I think it becomes an abstraction that could distort the main twitter feed beyond all usefulness. As repeatedly said, at some point conversations become noise, and pretty soon noise becomes intolerable. When that begins to affect the content of your own tweets, limiting them to blog post announcements and little more, something’s got to change.
Six months ago I looked at some of the people I was following — Wil Wheaton, Xeni Jardin, John Scalzi — and I had the same feeling as you did: hypocrites. Why should I follow someone who hasn’t the courtesy to follow me back? Now, I have the answer to my own question: noise.
I have a friend who recently found herself trapped and unhappy with her presence on Flickr. It wasn’t an issue of having too few friends or too little attention — it was that she had far too many. People from all over the world were making her a contact, commenting on each and every photo she posted. She found herself feeling obligated to then comment on each and every photo of each and every contact. It began to consume her days, and the service went from something that enriched her life to something that was a burden. At that point, she felt she had no alternative but to basically shut down her presence on Flickr altogether. It had simply grown out of control. I explained to her that each individual must establish his or her own framework for utilizing social media sites and tools. If the tool has become a burden, it simply is no longer useful.
We’re charting new territory with these social media web tools. As they explode in popularity, the tools will have to adapt to become more versatile — more critically, though, I believe that we also will have to adapt along with them. Twitter has grown and evolved. To put it simply, you’ve had to readdress your relationship with it.
At the end of the day, if this change in your “policy” has reinvigorated your relationship with Twitter as a tool, that can only result in good.
J.C. –
You are right on regarding the difficulty of following too many people on Twitter. In fact, subsequent to protecting my Twitter ID, I gauge if a new request to follow me is a case of “friend collecting” by the number of people they are following! It just isn’t possible (or fun) to try to follow more than 100 people in my estimation.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there may also be more people like myself, who follow people with different expectations. There are friends from home I follow and converse with regularly via Twitter. Then there are those, such as yourself and some of the other podcast authors, who I am interested in following as a means of accessing early updates on what you are working on or for the banter (between yourself, Sigler, Tee, etc.) and I don’t expect you to follow in return. Then there are those that I follow because they are just too funny (i.e. @yoda and @darthvader) who I really don’t expect to follow in return. I think Twitter has evolved from its initial intentions and along with that the expectations of reciprocal follows has evolved as well.
All that said, you are made of awesome for even taking the time to explain your intentions with so much detail and care.
Twitter has needed groups for some time now. Great analysis on the subject, J.C.
I’m totally with you, J.C. I’ve seen the whole “twitter karma” thing, as you called it, of following people back when they follow you, but I never practiced it myself. If someone followed me, I needed more than that as a reason for me to follow them back, I need to be actually interested in something they do. I don’t have nearly the number of Twitter followers as you do, but if I followed everyone back, the signal to noise ratio becomes so low that Twitter effectively becomes useless for watching what other, interesting people are doing, and only for broadcasting out what you’re doing to your followers. In short, it loses it’s purpose, which is why I do, and have from the beginning, only followed people that I know or somehow find interesting. I’m sorry, this might sound mean, simply having a connection to me by following me doesn’t warrant a follow back. Not everyone I follow I know personally, or even online. For example, some are “Internet famous” public figures, but for everyone I follow, I find them interesting and what they do interesting, which can’t be said for any and every stranger.
This almost kind of seems to have been a taboo subject on Twitter, and I’m glad to see that other people are coming out and saying basically what I’ve felt all along. Even for a relative nobody like me, if I followed everyone back who follows me, Twitter would be a lot more useful. I can’t even imagine how Twitter has any use left when you’ve got followers in the thousands.
Looks like I’m one of the Unfollowed but it’s all good with me. I know the problems that come with the noise of too many people in your stream.
I’ve found the TweetDeck Twitter client to be really helpful with this b/c it lets me create groups of people i follow so i can watch each group seperately. I have a Podcaster group, a Toronto group and some other ones to cut down the noise when everyone is grouped together.