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In mid 2006 a man by the name of Evan Williams, (founder of Odeo, a once powerful podcasting company) mentioned to me about a new project he was working on. I scored myself an invite, signed up, stared at the hideous green logo for a while and then promptly forgot about it. The site was clunky and seemingly targeted at the US mobile market. At this stage running my US cell number was an annoyance so I didn’t see any value in the site.
Later that year, Robert Scoble and a handful of notable bloggers started to generate buzz about that aforementioned service so I decided to sign up again. The site had undergone some cosmetic changes and renamed itself from twttr to Twitter. Things had changed too. The site was populated with icons of silicon valley who were constantly using the site and unlike the first time I visited Twitter, it actually started to make sense.
From that point onwards, I was hooked.
I quickly tried to get regognised by the Twitter community which was mostly comprised of Americans who didn’t know who I was. I pushed for followers and eventually found myself in the top 10 most followed people on Twitter. More people were following me than “web celebs” such as Jason Calacanis or Leo Laporte. Thanks to this I developed a lot of valuable connections throughout Silicon Valley despite never having been there in the first place.
About 18 months after I had joined Twitter it started to evolve into a much bigger entity. No longer was it people Tweeting into the void about what they were doing on a daily basis, it was now a public forum with open discussion so I stopped following people at random and started to focus on the community.
Fast forward a few years later and the social network is now one of the most powerful websites on the Internet with media outlets, celebrities, political parties and even machines on other planets Tweeting. Twitter had completely changed my life by offering me new personal relationships, career options, travel opportunities and much more. I found myself being recognised, appearing in major publications and I know I’d be a completely different person today if I didn’t discover microblogging.
So whilst Twitter evolved around me, the way I used Twitter stayed pretty much the same. I kept an eye on my public timeline and added my two cents in every so often. This worked quite well, even when I once was following around 7000 Twitterers (I had to cull since Twitter felt I was abusing the API at the time).
But last night I realised that I now almost never pay attention to the main timeline. It was too noisy. Thanks to the introduction of Twitter Lists I moderate my Twitter use on a regular basis. When I’m busy, I’ll only pay attention to a single list that comprises of 50 accounts that I deem important. When not busy, I have 6 other lists that I’ll keep an eye on depending on what I’m doing at the time. There was no real reason to be following anyone unless they have a private account. I figured I need to gain control of my timeline again and use it properly – but to do this I needed to remove a few accounts.
So last night I culled.
Well, it wasn’t a culling, it was more like mass genocide.
I unfollowed EVERYONE.
As I write this post, I am currently following 5 people (sometimes 1,090 people – it constantly changes). No idea who these 5 people are, it seems to be a Twitter bug given the fact that when I check my followers list, its empty.
But never fear, I might still be following you – you just don’t know it anymore. I’ll be slowly refollowing with the aim of maintaining a maximum of 500 people however thanks to Twitter lists, I’ll still be keeping track of around 5,000 Twitterers out there.
So I’m deeply sorry that you may have thought I’ve unfollowed you on purpose (my inbox started going berserk once people realised what was happening) but I will eventually follow you back once I start rebuilding my account – heck, if you @reply me now I’ll add you back in an instant!
- love, hugs, kisses and all that junk, your pal grum.