Ok, I have just made myself feel sick on Twitter by un-following most of the 3000 people I was following because I simply found myself in a situation where I was overwhelmed by the tweet traffic generated by that number of people.
As much as I carefully considered my reasoning for doing this, pushing that delete key on Twitter Karma, has certainly left my hands shaking.
If you find that I am not following you now I am very sorry. If however we’ve been talking directly I’ll re-follow you over the weekend once the the delete process has finished. I just couldn’t keep up with the wild stream of updates, direct messages from spam robots and most importantly I kept missing the valuable messages and updates I wanted to see. Drastic action was required.
Overwhelm has become a theme recently, but simplicity and presence are now my focus
You will have noticed in my post about “Being an entrepreneur and how not to travel” that I basically burnt myself out on a recent trip, and while this is true, it would be more accurate to say that I have been doing this more and more over recent years. So much so that last year I had to take a couple of months off due to sickness caused by stress and exhaustion. Fortunately people have been pointing out that I am heading there again and as I don’t want to go through that once more need to prioritise.
Fine … But why so ruthless with twitter?
I joined Twitter for the conversation, to make contact with people with whom to socialise, and keep up to date with information. During that time I have been deeply honoured to have built a pretty big following, and for much of the time I automatically followed people back, I guess to be polite. That was great in the beginning, but as the list grew, it became harder and harder to keep track of the people I was actually interacting with, and by now I can’t even see what people say unless they specifically reply to me because the stream of tweets moves to fast.
What started to as fun, soon turned into something of a burden as it makes me feel disrespectful if I don’t also get to see what these friends are saying, and of course I’m having only half the fun. It was never about talking at people, it needs to be about talking with people.
How I used Twitter started to change the day I found myself in trouble as I started to think more consciously about twitter spam, follower ego and how much noise there was. I love the service and love how you can interact so easily with people but felt there had to be a better way.
Simplicity and focus.
I’m hardly the first person to do this for example Loic Le Meur, a high profile geek and founder of Seesmic, did the same and deleted 23,000 followers, and although Tsudohnimh proposed a great solution for dealing with a large number of Twitter followers, I didn’t want another system.
In a post on needing to have fun, if you want to be creative I introduced a book and time management system called Zen To Done. This is now becoming a way of life for me at work. You will see it even in the fact that my blog looks different, it’s simpler, cleaner and by changing it’s focus slightly, it lowers the expectation of me by allowing me to be myself.
I’m sorry
I am again sorry that I can’t follow everyone, but I believe strongly in being present with the people I am with and therefore if you interact with me on my blog or twitter, I will with you. Say hello, let me know how life is treating you and what makes you get up in the morning and if you’re interested I’ll do the same. Alternatively if you prefer just to listen, that’s cool too.
Until we meet, have an awesome weekend and all the best.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Stephen, congrats with this great post, sharing the stress risk Twitter can cause so open and honest with us. Good that you chose for yourself. I wouldn't bother too much about what your decision could cause. The right followers will just return, for sure after reading your post!
I have a lot of respect for your decision, Stephen. I have experienced a similar feeling of being overwhelmed by Twitter. My reaction has been to all but ignore Twitter for the last few months.
For me the purpose of Twitter and social media is to build relationships with people I might not otherwise meet. Relationships are one-on-one things. Twitter is like a big cocktail party–a great place to meet people, but you can't hang out there all the time. And you can't build relationships with everyone.
I totally understand your thinking and I think it's wise to make priorities that favor balance in life.
Thanks Todd, I really appreciate your saying that. It's funny but, it's people like yourself that caused me to make this decision. You've been very supportive of me, and my blog, but I don't get to see your posts to reply to as well. I'm hoping these lower follower numbers will make that a little easier. And of course thank you for the support.
Thanks Peter, so far follower numbers are down by about 600 but I am sure they will return. :-)
Thanks Stephen. They also say that using TweetDeck is a help. I use it but I haven't taken advantage of the groups feature. You can tag your favorite tweeps and keep up with them more easily.
It's interesting how things never seem to work how you want, RSS for me is a bit like this, a system woks when there is a little to follow and not when there is a lot.
I got lots of feedback and have decided to take a different approach, I am going to follow again if people seem interesting and see what happens. It seems people really do expect you to follow them as well. It's frustrating however that you must have more following than being followed once you get past 2000.
Oh well, lets see if peoples new techniques with Tweet Deck will help
Thanks for Linking to my Article “How to prevent your Twitter Stream from Becoming a Flood” http://www.knowthenetwork.com/blog/2009/02/prev...
It sounds like you and @Loic started a trend. Good article!