After the break though it feels old fashioned and meaningless. I’ve been trying other services and they have much more purpose. In particular I’m thinking of feedly and friendfeed as twitter replacements.

They’re part of the real time web. I follow what people are linking too and I see the comments, as they’re written. It self refreshes every few seconds and everything is well organised.

I can look at this blog post and see how many people have commented on it and add my thoughts, I don’t need to create a full new tweet to share that I like something. i press like and my friends see it.

It’s just so much more efficient that in a sense I would go that twitter is dead to me. In reality I think it’s simply lost a lot of it’s appeal now that the early adopters have stopped using it as a means by which to keep in touch with friends.

I don’t know if that solves the problem other rather than staunch the bleeding… Have an open-mind, nonetheless.

I’m a more recent adopter of Twitter, but old enough to remember the day…. no really I was on dial up bulletin boards before they were connected to each other to make the internet. I’m not trying to pull rank here… Just saying…(..I’m old).

But the excitement of Twitter and the learning curve, the finding out about all the things people could dream of doing with such a basic service; I have to say it was like watching what happened when Tim Bernas-Lee published the HTML specification.

He certainly didn’t see what was coming but thousands of people said; ‘oh, I get it; hyperlinks. Right, we can link words to other documents. Wow!’…and they were off.

This time I am just in time to see the S Fry and now J Ross et al, all porking up the stats. So what?

We I also see people asking how the hell Stephen Fry can manage his followers? Well in TV terms it is small…er…fry? He is just used to talking to that many people. But it be interesting to see how that all evolves. It is some kind of democracy at work, maybe we will have the first fat openly gay guy as president of England. i think more amazing thing have just happened in America. Wasn’t Twitter involved there too?

I’m saying I have learn as much from the medium, from learning the whole crazy asynchronous/random/surreal democratic reality of talking to hundreds of people around the world as well as from some of the fine twitter content(and dross).

I happened to be on line when the bombs went off in Mumbai and also just happened to have friends there. That was a mortifying few hours (It was at least half a day later that RTE had a mention) I won’t forget seeing phone camera shots of the wreckage and tweets from across the street as gunmen ran past.

When RTE did start running the reports it took me quite a while to realize it was the same event. The dry, jobsworth and censored tones. I know which reality I could believe.

So please recall what it was like for you at the start. When you first got your account. Those first few tweets. If it is boring for a while take a break but please come back.

All the best Dave

You follow 400+ people, or approximately 2/3rds of the people who follow you. There is no obligation for you to follow all of those people, It’s YOUR Twitter stream; it should be streamlined to whatever is manageable and enjoyable to you.

Personally, I have a cap of 115. If I add someone new, I have to drop someone else. I can’t manage more.

I suspect – although you should tell me if I’m full of shite – that when you say culling your Twitter stream isn’t the solution, what you’re really saying is that it isn’t a solution you like. Those are not the same things.

Tweet that you’re dropping EVERYONE and rebuilding your list “over the next few days.” Then add back the 100 people who give you the most out of Twitter.

See if you like Twitter better when it’s really what YOU want, and not what you feel obligated to make it.

very interesting post.

Although my numbers are nowhere near the others, maybe it’s another one of those Internet fads that is nearing the end of it’s life cycle?

During the shorty campaign I started of with 245 followers as I type this I have over 880 followers have of whom do not talk to me. I think these guys will fall of the face of the earth soon enough, if they don’t converse I will cull them.

Like Pat I have 30 or so people that I talk to on a regular basis but I will talk to others if I see something of interest. But nowadays it is all about your twitter grade how elite you are etc which is a terrible shame, even this morning I see Kevin Rose has a post on techcrunch talking about how to gain more followers!

I will be starting myself to keep the numbers down, because I love this so much I don’t want it to be ruined by the social media whores!

And you’re not the only one thinking like this at the moment. Several bloggers I read are thinking about the whole “nature of Twitter is changing” thing, but most of them are thinking of ways they can change the way they use it to better benefit themselves, rather than ditching it entirely.

I got my first qwitter message yesterday from some SEO bloke – in response to my excessive tweets about rugby. For me that was a result! But the fun is still there – you can still meet the same interesting people, get tips, have your say – so all that early stream of randomness is still there.

Your suggestions are great – not displaying the numbers might just be away to discourage the pests.

I don’t know why, possibly because I fear twitter turning into bebo and becoming a mindless “how many friends do you have?” kind of deal. I try to keep my followers and following lists pretty balanced, I like to follow those who follow me and visa versa, however it is people who have thousands of followers who, to me, kind of defeat the fun personal part of twitter.

I dunno, I think twitter is in a kind of limbo at the moment, like a teenager searching for an identity. Let’s hope it finds one that works for us all.

Like you I keep recommending it so others can experience it but I feel overwhelmed – it’s not the same little microcosm as it started out, where there were a few people whom I often got conversing with, like Pat, Damien, yourself, John Breslin, Bernie etc etc and now you’re all going past in a flood and I feel a bit fatigued.

Having said that I got tired of facebook for a few months and then eventually came back after they tweaked it and I didn’t have a flood of useless YouTube re-postings and forwarded emails. I wonder how Twitter can get its groove back for early adopters?