Tangent
I had a crazy thought on my commute this morning. Well, I had many, but this is the first one I’m applying. I am going to try to rebuild my Twitter network and see if the dynamic changes. My hypothesis is that it won’t. I’m going to use Twitter Karma to stop following everyone. Then I’m going to use Tweeterboard to follow the top 25 people I communicate with. From there, I will follow the people they talk to, as well as anyone who sends me a direct reply. Any guesses on how this will change anything?
April 17th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I’m all in favour of ruthless pruning of the social network tree on occasion, then letting it grow back to see how the network changes. I’ve done this with Bloglines when I moved to Google Reader, and I think I’m due for another Google Reader purge. I think that you might find you have fewer connections after the regrowth, but that they will be stronger and/or more meaningful.
Just make sure I’m on the list, OK?
April 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I like the new look of your blog. just wondering why you are looking to change the dynamic? I agree with @robwall- at first you will probably have fewer, but more intense connections. But I also agree with your assertion that the dynamic won’t be all that different after awhile you will find yourself talking to a lot of the same people. I prune here and there and usually find that when I unfollow someone I end up clicking on them to read updates directly from their page b/c of someone else’s tweet to them. It’s fun to play around.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
[...] online conversations a bit more personally– even in an informal place like Twitter– so Jen’s approach is a bit too flippant (too informal? I’m not trying to be negative, it just isn’t a [...]
April 18th, 2008 at 5:37 am
Chris,
I completely agree that the approach is personal and one won’t work for everyone. I disagree that my approach was flippant. In fact, I decided on that approach out of respect for those with whom I converse the most. I would have preferred not to have dropped everyone, but there was no practical way to sort through more than 300 people. As soon as I dropped everyone, I added back 25-30 or so of my most frequent connections. From there, I added the people with whom they conversed. I am now following 75 and have met several new people I feel will contribute to my experience. While my approach was lighthearted, I certainly don’t think it was disrespectful. Considering I used as formal data as I could find to add my contacts back, I wouldn’t say it was informal either.