The Mendicant Bug

My previous twitter policy stated that I would follow anyone who follows me.  That has worked well for me over the past few months, since I use Twalala to filter my tweets down to a workable level.  People like Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) approve of this follow-back practice, while others like Daniel Tunkelang (@dtunkelang) do not.  Since I was able to filter my tweets with this online service, it wasn’t an issue and really the only people getting my attention were the people I would really be following anyway.  It seemed more polite to follow back.

Unfortunately, this has become unmanageable.  If I want to be able to use Twitter to pay attention to the people I want, I am forced to use Twalala‘s web service and a similar feature set is not offered by any sort of iPhone app I’ve been able to find.  There are a couple of desktop apps that allow this type of thing, like TweetDeck and Nambu, but I don’t like Adobe Air apps and Nambu’s iPhone app isn’t as good as Tweetie.  Plus the iPhone app doesn’t allow filtering as far as I can tell.

So all that to say, I’m sick of it!

I’m finally caving to Daniel’s advice and I’m pruning my Twitter friends.  If you find that I have unfollowed you and we have conversed before, please drop me a note as it might have been an accident.  The people I keep in touch with the most, though, will still have me as a follower.