140Char

Are you a fan of the same people? (Pic: wvs on flickr)

Unlike the people who apparently follow thousands publicly on Twitter, and then have a second account to follow the people they actually listen to, I only have the one main Twitter account.

And until today, I proudly stated that I’d only ever unfollowed two people – but following 1970+ was beginning to stretch even my Twitter Addiction Disorder.

So I thought I’d do a quick check, via Twitter Karma.

In the end, I reduced my Following figure by about 30 or so. Not major, but I don’t think I can realistically go over 2000 for the time being and still interact with a reasonable percentage of people – so it frees up 30 more follows for people.

The criteria for unfollowing was a combination of:

• If the account hadn’t been updated in over 100 days.
• If it was someone spammy I’d mistakenly let through.
• If it was someone whose interests etc were completely unrelated to mine, their blog didn’t help, and I’d never interacted with them in any way.
• Or if it was a fake account or a discontinued service.

What surprised me was the amount of followers for accounts that hadn’t been updated in a year, or for discontinued services.

I wonder how many people are following dead accounts, or those that have since been revealed to be fake, or changed purpose.

So do you ever review who you’re following?