A few minutes ago I asked for everyone to please @cdevroe me their blog URL on Twitter. Here’s why.
After a few years of Twitter use I’ve found that, through trial and error, to keep a signal vs. noise balance and keeping the value of Twitter high enough for me to keep using it – I only follow a very few number of people (52 as of this writing) compared to the number of people that follow me (1,609 as of this writing).
It isn’t that I do not want to follow everyone back. I do. I’m actually pretty interested in the mundane. Whether you are involved in interesting projects, run a cool company, or just have an average life – I want to read about it. But when I tried that, I ended up not being able to keep up with Twitter at all. It was impossible. I missed important Tweets. I eventually ended up completely ignoring Twitter. The same thing happened to me on Flickr. Whenever my family would ask me "Did you see my latest photo on Flickr?" and I’d have to answer that I hadn’t – I knew I had too many Flickr contacts.
So, that is why I asked for everyone’s blog URL. If I can’t follow you on Twitter, I’m going to subscribe to your blog. That is my way of paying you back for following me. If your blog is interesting, well written, about a topic I like – I’ll probably be subscribed for years to come. In fact, I may even link to it or suggest that other’s subscribe!
So, to all of you that responded and gave me your blog’s URL. I’m now subscribed to it and am looking forward to reading what you’re up to. Thanks for following me on Twitter.