I follow a lot of people on Twitter, you could say I’m an ‘aggressive’ user of the system and this might be seen by some as a bit wrong, maybe a bit ’spammy’. Certainly some people, after following a few people, get a bit overwhelmed by the amount of conversations going on and start to unfollow quickly, so how can I possibly keep track of everything given that I’m following about 3000 people?

Well that’s where technology comes in.

First of all, I love twitter to bits and I’m going to keep on following more people. Some will follow me back, some won’t, but that doesn’t matter, I want to know what’s going on. Now if you follow more than about a thousand you’ll notice that you’ll miss most tweets – they just never appear on your screen as you’ll receive more than a hundred updates between refreshes.

So don’t use the web then. Here’s how to do it so you can follow thousands of people without going bonkers:

  • Download a desktop application
    It is madness to use the Twitter home page. Download something like TweetDeck, Twhirl or Destroy Twitter (unfortunate name). They’re great tools that allow you to manage your account.
  • Follow lots of people, but search within your niche
    Whatever you do or are interested in, search for them using one of the tools above and then follow them. You can even use things like ‘Twitseeker’ which will make the whole job a lot easier. Go for it, but remember, you may reach the limits imposed by Twitter. Don’t worry, they still love you.
  • Search and filter
    You’ll now be following a lot of people who you are interested in, but there will be a lot of tweets going on, some you’re not bothered about. Use the ’search’ functionality of the tools to filter out the ones you’re interested in at the moment – ignore the standard timeline and the whole affair is far more manageable.

See? Easy. I follow thousands of people but I don’t have to listen to them tell me about their trip to the toilet. I just filter out the noise and listen to the stuff I’m interested in.

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