On Twitter

As I mentioned in the previous post, I tweet. I don't tweet a lot, but I certainly tweet more than I post here. I also use it more than my immediate group of friends.

I have 104 followers. People who hang on my every word (except they don't.) And I follow between 110 and 120 people at any one time. That, for me, is manageable. I read pretty much every tweet on my stream; I may not read them as they happen, but I do read them. It doesn't take too long either.

A while ago I started an experiment to follow more people to see what the limits were. Turns out that when you do that something exponential happens. More and more people follow you, and the cycle continues. Forever growing. Well, not forever. I've seen these types of account, and they hit a limit around 3500. There are 3500 idiots you all follow each other. And most of them are self-declared SEO experts. What this means is that every post has some pointless triviality and a link to their eBook.

The upshot of the experiment was that I found that above 150 people I couldn't follow the stream anymore. My phone client refreshes every 3 minutes, my web every 2. On both with 110 people I can often go 20 minutes without a single tweet. At 150 I was getting around 3 a refresh. Too much data (and far too much noise).

Some people may be able to follow more, but I came up with 2 rules off the back of that:
1. Anyone following more than 300 people has got filters and won't read anything you post.
2. I'll only follow those who interest me. If you follow me, fine. Don't expect it in return unless you have something worthwhile to add to my stream.

A final backup rule. Anyone following more than 300 people must have something very worthwhile to add as they're probably a twat. (Thanks Dave, we won't forget)

Right, enough twittering, it's time to get back to tweeting.

Alive and kicking. (Hot and sweaty edition)

Here I am in a slow moving tube, slowly heating up, listening to "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac.

Why isn't music as good as this today? A whole album of class. No filler, no vocal effects, no silly electronic gimmicks. Just classic rock.

I'm definitely getting old. Music released in the year I was born is "better" than today. Aye, and all this were fields once. Kids today don't know how good they've got it. I had to go to school, uphill both ways, after a full shift down the pit. Etc etc etc.

You may have noticed the lack of posts recently. Actually you probably haven't seen as there haven't been any real views on the blog for a long time. I have made well over 700 posts on twitter (see that side bar over there on the left), but that's not quite the same. Strangely 140 characters is easier to come up with than a blog post. There's so much going on at the minute, most of it bad, frustrating, or just plain exhausting that I don't want to write about it. Things have to come to a head soon though. The status quo cannot continue, and I'm mentally working through my options. Maybe, just maybe I'll get back to posting when all this is worked through. Those three draft posts may yet see light of day!

In the mean time, sporadic posts of waffle, and irregular twittering is the best you're going to get.

But as you're not reading anyway, who cares?!