

This is my Twitter algorithm.  What's yours? - danshapiro
http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/06/how-to-use-twitter/

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corin_
Personally I only want to follow people that:

a.) I know personally

b.) Tweets in such a way that interests me more than 50% of the time

So I don't actually pay attention to who follows me, and I only currently
follow 14 people (though a few more follow me)

What I would say, however, is that I disagree with your "< 3 tweets/day" - I
know what you're aiming at, plenty of people tweet WAY too much (I suspect I
do, now and then), but there are plenty of reasons for more than three
interesting tweets in a day, and it's quite possible for someone to tweet more
than three times a day on a regular basis without it being annoying or
pointless.

~~~
danshapiro
I pass no moral judgment on frequent tweeters. But given that I only follow
folks who tweet infrequently, any frequent tweeters quickly dominate my
twinbox. So that approach doesn't work for me. I do make exceptions for
transient events if they're interesting.

I <3 < 3 tweets per day.

~~~
corin_
Fair enough then :)

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jasonlgrimes
My algorithm is a little different. I analyze every follow request with what
kind of information is this person going to provide--does it add to my
personal network, interesting commentary on sports or what is happening in the
music, snowboard and mountain scene -- if so I will follow them.

~~~
danshapiro
The number of new follows I get isn't huge, but it's enough that I won't check
each one for content. I'm sure I'm not the only person who wishes that follow
mails contained the last 5 tweets from the follower... that'd help things
immensely.

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ahlatimer
My algorithm is (notice new follower) -> (ignore). The thing I happen to like
about Twitter is that it's curated. I've found plenty of interesting blog
posts, videos, etc. by following a handful of people that interested me.
Beyond that initial spike in follows when I first joined, I haven't actually
followed someone because they started following me.

If I notice that someone is getting frequently RT'ed by some of the people I
follow, and the original tweets are actually interesting to me, I start
following them. I don't really use any other way of finding followers, and
it's worked out fairly well for me. I have a fairly uncluttered twinbox, but I
still get a healthy dose of interesting tweets.

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SkyMarshal
It's all about maintaining a high signal:noise ratio.

1\. They tweet about my professional interests only - CS, programming, web
development/marketing/startups, or finance/trading/econ (and for the next few
weeks, the World Cup). Little to no personal stuff. Get a second Twitter
account for that.

2\. 4:1 or higher signal:noise ratio. If I see a second tweet about your
Starbucks latte being too hot, or that you just finished your daily jog and
are sweating, /unfollow. DO. NOT. CARE.

So far that's about it. I don't screen based on follows, followers, tweet
frequency, etc., as that has no strong correlation to tweet quality.

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ashleyw
My constant pruning of spammers leaves me with rather depressing follower
stats: <http://i.imgur.com/r3tRN.png>

The same goes for who I follow. I only follow 57 people as of writing, but 99%
of them are people I'm truly interested in. I try to never follow more than
one or two new people per week, that way I can easily see if they're worth
following, or just people I'll end up skipping past.

<http://twitter.com/ashleyw>

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imack
I also go by the followers/follow > 1, but for N>500\. If a friend of mine
follows 100 people but only has 50 followers, I give them a pass. I'll flat
out block someone if it's clearly a "social media expert" with follows close
to followers over 1000. It's pretty clear that they aren't really following
anyone and will unfollow me in 48 hours if I don't help pad their stats.

~~~
danshapiro
I agree. Friends always get a bye on the filter, but I'm way more likely to
look at someone who has 150 follows and 50 followers than someone with 2k of
each (which means they're just playing the follow me/follow you game).

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pavel_lishin
The only things I care about are whether their tweets are interesting,
informative or entertaining.

I don't follow everyone I know personally, because even those people tend to
be boring and spam me with minutiea of their day.

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keefe
1\. sign up for twitter, be excited I get my first name. 2\. have no time to
play on twitter

