The fact that there is a scheduled downtime at 8pm pacific shows that twitter is successful in spite of the twitter staff not because of anything they do.

I honestly hope they do decide to sell the business to someone that has some idea of how to run what should be a massively profitable site.

Should Twitter whip out a business model that the majority of the community does not like, we will all move to identi.ca or some other microblogging provider unless Twitter would change its policies to appeal to the majority.

There really isn't that much to worry about, I would think.

But your point, trumps his. Either they need to use Twitter the way others are using it, or, may I suggest they create a user's advisory group to give input on future development/changes.

Or, get this, perhaps they're too busy actually working on improving Twitter to actually tweet,,,

And its surprising the power of their own product isn't being used by the staff in any meaningful ways for community management, technical support and just cause its fun to connect with one's users.

Success breeds contempt, ala Microsoft, I guess. Killing off discovery through @'s should have been our first clue that Fonzie has his water skis on.

When I read @ev's condescending response above, it sounds as out of touch as Senator Ted Stevens famous "tubes" speech. The printed word doesn't convey if he was being sarcastic in that response, so I can only assume his dismissiveness is genuine.

I really hoped @ev and @biz would different and not be like this, but whatever. Thankfully the series of Tubes that is teh interwebz is a *fickle*, *FICKLE* mistress, the next new hotness is always just around the corner and the Twitter staff can watch Rome burn just like Frienster did.

When Twitter is your job, you'd probably not tweet for fun.

IMO, looking beyond the noisy 1% will help the company build a long standing product that average, Internet users can find value in. While engaging with brands is fun and provides a wealth of monetization value, none of that is going to be relevant if brands are just engaging with brands or industry professionals. How can there be a diverse conversation if it's a silo of happy, compliant power users?

Not saying the two are mutually exclusive but, Twitter is more fun exchanging banter with friends versus pitching products.

Also, since when do people think that founders' original intent is what's most important about a startup with traction?

But it is difficult to communicate about tech. issues in 140 characters. Therefore Twitter uses, like everybody else, electronic mailing lists for that type of communication. They have employees that are dedicated to the communication with the large community of programmers that are building additional services using the twitter API infrastructure. These are the real power users for Twitter and they are treated with respect.

@Ev's email on his own Twitter use seems well thought out and makes a lot of sense to me, given his schedule. To each his own, but I don't think Twitter's direction would be any different if @Ev followed the 800K people that followed him or even a much smaller number like 25K people.

Where I'd disagree:
- It's necessary for the developers to use Twitter to find out how users are using Twitter.

The goal here is really for the developers to understand the needs of the Twitter community so that they take the product in direction that improves the user experience across the spectrum of usage patterns (power users, casual users, etc...)

Where I think you've mistakenly made an intellectual leap: your assumption was that just because the Twitter team is not using Twitter like the power users are using Twitter, they won't be able to develop for the power users or to understand their needs.

This is simply not true. Notice that the @ replies fiasco only lasted 24 hours. Users told Twitter how they used the service and Twitter responded as a result of this feedback.

Feedback, interviews, and surveys are all ways to understand your users without needing to be your users. Oftentimes, observing them from a distance can actually give a better, not worse, picture of their needs.

However the average user doesn't. If you want to spam users, sure go ahead and try and follow everybody who follows you. But when you start doing that, you stop using Twitter as a communication tool and it becomes just another marketing outlet.

Anthony, I follow 3k people (out of 10k that follow me) and don't spam them.

However, the idea of a board of inquiry for usage patterns is very good. Such a board could alleviate the fears of minority user groups (like pro blogging power-users).

Anyway, I agree with the ones who said the @replies situation is a mess: seeing random replies was the best way to discover interesting stuff (I mean, many people discovered my blog thanks to random replies) and I think Twitter should do a step backward.

I also agree with Marshall when he says "That's what groups are for, something hugely valuable that 3rd party desktop clients offer and the Twitter web interface does not.": twitter.com interface should be highly improved in order to:

1- provide a good search feature;
2- grouping;
3- better DMs.

Hope they will read RWW's comments :D

The Twitter staff may not be keeping good track of the developer community. While most developers are simply interested in developing new Twitter apps, others may have a more malicious intent, such as violating copyright and/or using content not their own for profit (and without permission).

In addition, with all these platforms asking users to log in using their Twitter IDs and passwords is especially troubling. How do we know that our info isn't being pharmed and used for illegal and harmful purposes?

This IS a serious cause for concern.

I think the danger is real: Twitter HQ could make some decisions that ruin the beauty of Twitter and that's been made clear by the whole reply fiasco.

The beauty is the openness which it allows for, the transparency and boundlessness of connection. If Twitter HQ did something to ruin that it would absolutely be a game changer... "That's a deal breaker, ladies!"

Yet, the reply fiasco is a great learning point for me. I was really upset about it. I found out about so many great people through open replies, and I thought it terrible that I'd be losing new potential contacts and info. However, for the past 2 weeks I've noticed it's kind of nice to be able to reply to someone knowing that it's not going to cloud up my followers' Twitter clients. Of course, it's easy to get around as well. I can put "hey" or "*" before the reply if I do want all to see the reply. So I have the choice of a semi-hidden reply or an open one, at the cost of a character. Not so bad.

This has been a learning experience for me and maybe others have experienced the same thing.

I think the worry about Twitter HQ making a horrible decision that defaces what we love so much about it is legitimate. There's a real question as to whether or not these people actually understand how people are using it. "Power users" aside.

Ideally, as @ev points out, it's great to have a small list. That way you usually REMEMBER your followers and can interact much more with them :)

Speaking of getting developer information, it would have been so much easier to get it from our twitter apps site twi5.com We profile the best twitter apps and provide developer information as well!

And as for only 2 out of 49 Twitter team members following more than 500 people and no one was over 1k, I'm glad that they remainder actually understand that you can't meaningfully follow than many people. Part of what differentiates Twitter from other social networks is the asymmetry of its follower model, and I happen to think those 47 Twitter members are setting the right example here, unlike, say, Guy Kawasaki.

Twitter's rapid adoption comes in large part from its laissez-fair way letting users figure out what they want from it. You might think of showing a similar tolerance towards its employees, rather than presuming that they should use Twitter the way you do.

People with the largest followings work at encouraging those people -- they listen, follow and tweet back. That's the role of a community or marketing person -- not a developer.

http://twitter.com/andysowards
http://twitter.com/crazeegeekchick
http://twitter.com/munklefish
http://twitter.com/mvgalle
http://twitter.com/tanepiper

Those folks are coding all day and follow lots of people on Twitter.

What's great about Twitter is that it can be used in so many different ways by different people. So what the Twitter folks don't use the service like you or I or anyone else does?!

Please stop trying to find every twisted angle to write yet another story about Twitter. :-)

http://twitter.com/lliu

In particular, it at least is a good start to a conversation about the extent to which and how is the "best" /"correct"/"expected" way for a company to "eat the dogfood". When users start to drive the way a product is used, should the company be expected to adjust their usage as well?

With respect to the number of people Twitter employees are following, I have to agree with @Ev. As someone who accesses Twitter either via iPhone or the web, I don't have access to group features. I've found my Twitter experience to be richest when following

At the end of the day, it's a free service that's new. There was a time where people actually cared about what MySpace did too.

I've been pretty critical of Twitter in the past, but I have to say that I found Ev's response to be very thoughtful, appropriate and, well, simply right.

You are an aberration. Scoble is an aberration. And I mean that in the most loving way possible :). You are not a typical Twitter user (from at least what I can tell and what common sense would suggest), and the loud but active handful of SEOs and marketers and life coaches and whatnot who follow umpteenbillion people are not typical Twitter users.

And seriously, let's take a step back for a moment and play with the numbers. You've got, say, 1500 followers. Each posts a (very conservative) average of 1 post a day, and you feel inspired/obligated to post replies to 1 out of every 20 posts you read. (and this doesn't even include @replies, which, even with this modest volume, are likely to be many).

You're reading 1500 posts. A day. Writing 75 posts. A day. If we are *very* conservative and say you can read and mentally process 1 post a second and can write your own post in 20 seconds, that's 3000 seconds, or nearly an hour a day, just doing a very cursory slog through your Twitter account.

Seriously, man, an hour a day. I don't think most people, or at least most non-geeks, would jump at that opportunity.

You know how many people my average non-geek friends on Twitter seem to follow? Around 50-100. And me, personally, I only follow... er, wait a minute, Twitter is down (again), so I can't check. However -- and I feel somewhat bad about this -- I don't even read 10% of my own Twitter stream regularly.

I'm sure some will tell me, hey, use this handy-dandy super-duper program and group your friends, once for each computer you use! You don't have to actually *read* all the stuff from your friends!

How many -- look, I'll say it -- how many *normal* people are going to take the trouble to find and download a Twitter app, assign friends (current and new ones) to groups, and so on? I don't think that many in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon. Maybe I just don't get it. But I truly believe that the passionate, well-meaning folks who yell the loudest (whether about @replies or about employees of their favorite service not using the service as they think they *should)... these folks are a tiny, tiny fraction of the overall service membership.

You know what would doom Twitter? If they listened to these folks instead of following through on more well-thought-out plans to both attract and keep *mainstream people* active on the service. I hope and trust they'll choose the latter.

To clarify - with reference to my Twitter usage, I've found my experience works best when following fewer than 400 people (although I've eeked above that lately!). I respond to any @'s and use search to find relevant tweets and continue to participate "in the conversation"

It's the so-called twitter power users that spread the concept of follow-back-everyone-and-make-your-numbers-big.

It's plain lame. Twitter is ultimate flexibility. If you're there to promote a product or website, that might work. But, if it's used for enjoying your life in a broader way, you must exercise care while following and unfollowing.

I'm afraid this article is slightly biased towards the power users. No one is a power user. it all depends on how the term is defined.

But you are making a point to separate normal users and power users (some being early adopters). To further this discussion, I think you should do an article that delves into the autopsy of a "twitter power user" and why they might matter to the evolution of twitter the company.

@sull

If anything they can just study users that follow a high number of people. It's not like it's not all public.

Also, what could they possibly learn from forcing Twitter employees to become "power users". The best course for everyone is to let followers come organically because this is the only way to produce meaningful data. The best solution would be for Twitter to hire an existing "power user" to become a consultant.

I follow around 350 and I really don't enjoy the fact that I miss A LOT of the conversation. I want to read everything that everyone has to say. Not everyone uses Twitter the way I do. I understand that. I guess the point of your article is only that Twitter needs to understand this too.

I've lost a lot of respect.
This recent parade of things twitter does wrong is telling.

How long have you followed a lot of people?
The people at twitter who have been ripped for
what's wrong with the company, and not fixing it fast
enough, should all follow many more other people and dilute their daily hours down even further?

Of follow thousands and pretend?

These are human beings.
If they listened to every critic, they'd have
a manual "What you must do" 1,000 pages long.

Unfortunately insults, critiques, bad advice,
personal attacks *have made it harder for helpful contributions to get through.*

Anyone who has been a twitter-watcher since the beginning can see a subtle recoil and increased desensitization
to incoming signals, following each wave.

Does twitter have a lot of improvements to make?
Yes.
You, "don't tell me how to live" social liberals are
telling them how to manage the minutae of their days.
This post, and the reaction is "Heads must roll! Bring in someone who knows what they're doing to run the company"

*About the very people who built the company* you all love, use and are obsessing over. o.O Hello?

Anyway, in my opinion, what Ev wrote you makes a lot of sense to me. I totally agree with you that because Twitter's workforce use differs from so many 'ordinary' (props on the knitters example) and (especially) power users, they may not understand the Twitter experience as they probably should, but Ev got me thinking about the nature of that experience, too. "...having more followers does not give you more time in the day."

Word.

Hardly.

Electricity you pay for. Twitter you don't.

Electricity doesn't limit your consumption. Twitter limits you per API calls.

Twitter is a really nice tool -- but as I understand it, they're in negotiations with Google -- so the day is coming when we're all going to see Google Adwords in Twitter... and the last time I plugged something into my electrical sockets, the electric company didn't slam me with advertising.

Seriously... who in the *&#!!#$ needs to know if a Twitter staffer has been wearing his underwear backwards all day long.

Sigh....

Generally, speaking, having the average Twitter staff member reflect the average usage of the general population is probably a good thing. My ultimate concern is that there seemed to be no power users on Twitter staff. My thoughts are one or two, would be more than enough to provide insights into those that 'work Twitter'.

The @replies issue is a great point, and while it may not have changed the staff's mind collectively, I think having a power user as advocate who is part of the Twitter staff could have foreseen the uprising a bit more; and speak to people's discontent with the current resolution.

I don't see the need for the Twitter staff to become Scoble; but there is benefit of having someone on staff who's purpose is beyond casual or personal use.

The concept that you have to follow everybody to be on the edge of the curve is a myth. Likewise, you can't follow 12 people and expect to have much of a clue, either. It needs to be in the hundreds, I think, at a minimum. But go much beyond a couple of thousand and the signal-to-noise ratio becomes too cumbersome.

And while products like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop are an enormous help, if you're using those to really only follow a small percentage of your network, why are you even following the rest in the first place?

Keep things relative. Nobody who is following 50,000 people is paying any attention to them at all.

A very simple thing they could do is to allow people to (privately or publicly) tag/group the people they follow. Lots of Twitter apps allow this, but wouldn't it make more sense if you could do it within Twitter?

You could even go a step further by allowing people to suggest the tags they want to be tagged with by other users.

If you 'don't want to miss anything' it usually means you want to be able to quickly check just what your real friends have tweeted, or the celebrities or the people in your local area or professional field.

Personally, I like the ambient awareness of dipping in and out when I want updates. I use a complicated, time-consuming system to keep up with my real friends. If Twitter staff had the same dilemmas then they'd be spurred into action and potentially DO SOMETHING.

I'll use a different simile to the electricity and washing machines.

It's kind of like not providing car parks at a car expo, simply because the staff ride bikes. If all the people that like what you're showing drive cars then you need to provide car parks.

If Twitter staff want people to use Twitter then they have to provide the tools to make that easy. The only way the staff are going to really understand what will make it easy is if they try using it the same way.

@smange

I think about the only thing it can be reliably used for is as a marker to identify narcisists.

So many of the so called top shelf twiterati- that I tried following turned out to be just an endless spouting of references to crappy blog posts and ho hum book titles, definitely not enough value to justify the hours required to sift through the woofers.

I think Ev's reply to you is spot on. I consider myself a Twitter "power user" (though that's a highly subjective and self-serving term) and I use it the same way Ev does, at least in terms of the number of people I follow. (I update a LOT more than he does.)

I think it's a lot smarter to follow fewer people, because you can pay more attention to updates of higher quality. If you're following thousands of people, even groups in Tweetdeck & other apps don't help much. You've still got a lot to look at, and it's overwhelming. At least it is for me.

And that's the big caveat. Here's the takeaway that matters, I think:

*Different people use Twitter in different ways.*

I don't think it's important that Twitter's staff uses its service in the same way its power users do. I think it's important that Twitter's staff understands the various use cases for the product - they don't have to actually use the service in the same way to do that.

Geeks and techies tend to have the point of view that, "If you're not doing it my way, you're doing it wrong." What most important for a service like Twitter is that its owners NOT fall into that trap. That's how tech-products-that-only-appeal-to-techies get built. Twitter's got to be a lot more than that, and I think Ev's point of view shows they're doing it right.

Dwight.

I have found that tweeting four to six times a day is about right. When people do much more than that, I tend to unfollow them. And I've heard from others that when I tweet more than that, they don't like it.

And I think it is impossible to follow 1,000 people like Ev does. I don't know how he does it. I follow about 400 and even then, I miss a lot of tweets. I follow a much smaller list on sms and do see everything on that list.

You make some very good points about third party developers, who are, to my mind, the most important user group out there. But even there, I agree with Ev that Twitter's API group needs to own that relationship and the senior team can't be expected to be on top of every developer out there.

It's good to post things like this that are constructively critical of companies like Twitter. It will be read by Twitter's team and investors it will help Twitter be even better.

Fred

Twitter 2.0 we can call it, and it will be reserved for all the Web 2.0 celebrities that want to make their living off of their communications.

Twitter 1.0 will be left for all the people who think that "2-3 tweets is excessive" and that "following 1,000 is a good upper limit," which is the majority.

Still, their low usage and insularity could lead them to conclusions about Twitter usage that goes against the habits of some more active users. I suggested to people I follow that Twitter form some sort of User Advisory Board composed of small & big Twitterers, coming from different timezones & countries, to represent the interests of users like them. But that idea received a resounding "NO!" from the tech folks who follow me.

Since it is rare to get a personal response to a suggestion, feedback or a complaint, I think it is imperative that Twitter actually demonstrate they are listening to their users. Like it or not, the buzz won't last forever and since it sounds (from what I've read) that user retention is a problem, loyal network users are important if their growth is going to be sustained and people don't defect to the next, shiny communication/network tool when it inevitably appears in the next year or two.

I think maybe it's the "power users" who need to step back and see how much value they really get from following huge numbers. Using search more effectively seems like a smarter way to go.

That only happened when a 'friend of a friend' helped me get their attention because she knew them.

You do know you will not get on Twitters 'suggested friends' list now, don't you?

Jim Connolly

Speak of specific concerns, not this nonsense.

So, now, they have to try to find a way to build a real business (based on revenue and not user-based-valuation). It will be interesting to see if they change their DNA and make the transition. In a way it easier to reach a huge valuation based on users (more emotional) than revenue (more rational).

Definitely interesting to watch. Needless to say, whatever they do, they (founders/investors) will get a huge return on investment.

Most "power user" twitter users are irrelevant. Do you send 50 tweets a day? Your signal is lost in noise. Are you following 1000 people who tweet 20 times a day? What's the chance you're getting anything valuable out of that experience? You only see a handful of those 20,000 tweets, are you fishing in the twitter river hoping to pick up a nugget of brilliance, or are you seeing a thousand "brushing my teeth" messages that have absolutely no bearing on your life at all?

You're seeing the product of herd mentality at work. Lots of people have called it the next thing, so most people assume they have to involve themselves as much as possible in order to be relevant.

It's a false belief. If twitter comes up with a revenue model that pisses off the elite %1 who have re-defined for themselves what the service actually is by devaluing it with a low-content low-value mentality, wouldn't twitter be better off without those people anyway? Wouldn't you?

I use twitter to follow the family and friends I actually know personally, not to yell into the darkness at a thousand strangers and hope that some day my angel with a million dollars comes and invests in my wonderful ideas. I can't imagine the noise and/or obsessive dedication that you need to have to consider a thousand people on your list a good thing. I definitely don't need my ego stroked by incorrectly thinking that all of a thousand people follow me are actually paying any attention either, but that's what the "elite" of twitter seem to crave. Insubstantial ego stroking in the guise of power and elitism. Congrats guys, for twisting around a probably useful service to something that's utterly pointless.

I'm a community manager and a digital communication & marketing strategist. My biggest fear is that Tech/design people will make decisions based on their own personal views of 'how things should be', when they themselves are not active users of the product they're designing and managing. You have to have your ear to the ground floor where innovation and trends bubble up from the community itself.

The @relplies fiasco is a prime example. Twitter brass flat out lied about the reason they eliminated that option, then proceeded to make mistake after mistake in communicating to the community, citing 'small' numbers who used the option as one reason choice. Well, when the option is so hidden and explained in such a convoluted manner, it's no wonder only a small percentage used it. If you phrased it as such: "would you like to see ALL tweets from those you follow?", I'd guess 25% of users would say yes, since this is a great way to discover new people and information.

The people who understood the magic of 'all @replies' knew that it was a door to discovery and a way to meet new and interesting people. Obviously this was not, and is not, something on Twitter brass' important list. They have decided we will see what THEY want us to see. After all, they designed Twitter (Fail whales and all), so don't they know best? Well, no. The community knows best what it wants. And the only way to understand what the community wants is to listen, learn, and respond in such a way that the community knows you're doing all you can to exceed their expectations.

What Ev and all those who turn noses up at anyone following thousand of people don't understand ... is that the ability to dip into a deep river of tweets at any given time gives an amazing and diverse snapshot of what's on people's minds, how they're using Twitter, news, trends, etc.

Ev is creative and brilliant and has helped design a gamechanging platform. But it doesn't mean he properly understands user innovation and community management.

Twitter also appears to largely ignore the developers of apps which greatly enhance how we use their service. Even if they ignore power users would they not at least want to be receptive to those who invest their own resources in systems that are supportive?

One day a Social Networking site will be different and actually listen to us. They will incorporate our ideas or at least acknowledge them. And THAT Social Networking site will definitely lead the pack.

P.S. Charles - I must disagree. Power users of any site are often the biggest fans and cheerleaders and create the most valuable content.

More generally I would agree with Ev et al. Twitter itself represents the high water mark of the social web. It's revolutionary in the amount of information that it allows individuals to create and consume. It's the furthest extension of what the web has been doing for the last 15 years. But the strength of Twitter is not going to be to follow more and more people. Sure there is a group of pro bloggers to whom this rapid exchange of information meets a direct need, but for most people following 1000 people is simply a waste of time. I don't want to hear about groups and clients either, anyway you slice it you are going to a huge bloat of information that provides very little value. Some tiny minority can make use of that information in a productive way, but for the rest of us Twitter is a tool that shines by way of selectivity, not symmetry.

To use SMS on cell phone as an example: The majority of american people probably send 1-2 txt msgs a day, while the 'power users' amongst us may send 100s+ a day. If the cell phone carriers insists on charging a high premium monthly costs that targets these power users specifically (say $20 a month) to offset the heavy usages, then the casual users will never bother to use the service at all.

I work for a company that makes IP-PBX based on Asterisk. There is always an understanding in our development team that we are building our systems for the widest possible audience - the everyday small business users, who are not beating down our doors for HD video conferencing or super-duper XML integration on their Cisco phones. We focus on a solid set of features most widely used by our users and potential customers, and we do them well. Oh and yes we do eat our own dog food too (which means some dropped calls once in a while) ;)

Clearly, the people at Twitter are clueless since they don't know this. Thanks for enlightening all of us.

Perhaps the employees of Twitter are busy, you know, working, as opposing to spending their days bleating out noise like unemployed people and marketing yuppies.

I've seen quite too many books, magazine articles, blog entries, and tweeters, advising or insisting how I should use Twitter, how I should ignore other advice, or even, how I should ignore all advice, all in carefully enumerated step, in order to gain the maximum number of followers in the grand contest.

I follow when contacted, to meet new contacts, to converse, and that's it. That simple. No bushwa.

great article MK.

Twitter is there and millions of people like it and not all of them are power users.

As long as twitter staff are there to wind up the rubber band it shouldn't matter whether they use it or not.

If there were a correct way to use it, the people who run the show would get to say what that is. (For example the 140 characters rule)

I think there are two issues with this post --

1) Your definition (or lack thereof) of "power users." In any case, recent stats by Harvard Business Publishing would characterize Twitter employees much closer to a "power user" than an average user.

2) The assumption that "power users" always deserve more influence in defining a product. Power users are one segment of a user base...and users are one factor in product development.

I expound much more on these ideas on my blog at the link below --

http://bit.ly/New4P

I suspect if you hadn't been Marshall from RWW you wouldn't have.

Honestly, the bizarre part is the number of folks in the comments taking umbrage at this article. It's almost as if they, themselves, were insulted.

You're saying it's better to be a follow whore and not possibly be able to keep up with all of the real conversations of interest to you, playing in yet another misguided popularity contest, rather than being selective and focusing on quality over quantity? And Twitter should cater those those users just because there are desktop apps and group capabilities to help people sort out the noise pollution they chose to subject themselves to in the first place? Sounds like Twitter's employees are the ones with the better long-term value plan here.

"At a certain point, you're not actually reading any more tweets by following more people -- you're just dipping into the stream somewhat randomly and missing a whole lot of what people say.

That's fine, but I believe people will generally get more value out of Twitter by dropping the symmetrical relationship expectation and simply curating their following list based on the information and people they want to tune in to."

It seems to us that Evan views Twitter as a way to keep in touch with your curated list of people you're following, which makes sense because the number of people you follow or who follow you doesn't mean a thing (unless they have plans to do something with that).

Randomly fishing for information in a river makes no sense. Neither does trying (to hard) to get a quick tweet out about your business product or service (with the inevitable exceptions [like pizza places]).

With respect to "symmetrical relationship[s]" and "curating following lists based on information and people you want to tune in to," this sounds like Twitter is going to become more "velvet rope."

I read recently that Rachel Maddow (the television personality) didn't own a television until recently. It doesn't seem to have any effect on her journalism or how informed she is on current events. All it suggests is that she doesn't like to be entertained by television.

I follow very few people, a couple are friends, but reciprocating every follow is unnecessary. Those who think you have something interesting to say may not be that interesting themselves.

Why does a high number of followers (or followed) mean that one is using Twitter the "right" way, or that it's somehow a better experience? As it is, I get a fair number of tweets come across per day. I can't even imagine the noise-to-signal ratio if I were following thousands of people.

All that aside, if you assume there is a correct way to use the service, who better to know that than the people who develop it? Maybe it's you who are using the service incorrectly, like some popularity contest, when it's simply social media.

Food for thought.

I won't disagree that the idea of Twitter employees using Twitter in a different way than most twitterers could indicate that the company could someday be moving in a different direction than some of its followers would prefer/anticipate. The data you guys crunched was a neat idea--a look inside the company.

I will say that even though there are "no rules" about how to use Twitter, I would say that if you follow more people than you can keep up with in any of your days--what's the point? You bring up this idea that if a person DOESN'T follow a large group of people, than that person is missing out. In my mind, that's what the trending topics is for. Also--all those super knitters following other people? I doubt they are reading all the tweets from those they follow--they just use the @replies feature so they can respond to people who bring up their name.

Twitter is awesome--use it however you want to. I just don't understand why you anyone would follow more than they can keep up with. Can anyone enlighten me?

Sure it helps if they use their own product, but you really think they need to follow more than 500 peoples useless driveling?

Honestly, why follow someone who: a) you don't know, b) has nothing valuable to say?

Some people have better things to do than spend all day on Twitter, and that happens to include the people working at Twitter.

Twitter people don't believe our social media gamesmanship hype! Waa-waa-waa!

Let's look at the web punditry's history:

2002: Blogs are the future of the net!,
2003: RSS is the future of the net!,
2004: Gmail is the future of net!,
2005: MySpace is the future of net!,
2007: Facebook is the future of net!,
2008: geo-location is the future of net!,
2009: Twitter is the future of net!

Using auto-follow, following thousands feeds, worrying about power users, arguing about desktop clients, and fretting over signal to noise ratios is navel gazing with a telescope.

You social media 'experts' are so full of crap telling other people how to use the internet. You are like sheep all running in a clump until you bump into a fence.

What's next, advising Apple on industrial design? Intel on semiconductor fabrication?

@tour_guide

If I were Ev, would rather have 200M users that on average tweet 1x a week than 5M that tweet 10x a day.

Adam

http://twitter.com/prewett

Now, if you look at me, I don't follow @chrisbrogan, @guykawasaki, @pistachio... 'cept, of course, I can see everything they tweet. If I followed them in a client they'd drown everyone I want to *interact* with, rather than read.

So, since you can't see whose twitter streams I'm reading regularly... you really don't know jack from public figures, I'd guess.

like @ev said "a following list does not reveal, necessarily, what one is paying attention to. Hundreds of people give me feedback by mentioning @ev -- which I check many times a day. I also have saved searches for "twitter" and other related terms."

Oh, and the "big hitters" I take as RSS? They search for their @replies, so they'll see if I do hit them up.

Recently in the not too distant past, I opened an account for http://twitter.com/dentalvisits, with the sole intention of learning how the greatest public relation minds accomplish their job objectives and was very surprised when the account was suspended.

That I guess happens everyday in the ordinary course of their daily activities, even more shocking was the fact that Twitter also suspended my ability to register this other related site http://twitter.com/smilemd.

I wrote several emails requesting reconsideration or reinstatement of the account and even until this day, a reasonable offer or explanation is nowhere to be found.

Thank you very kindly for writing this article!