I have a puzzling Love/Hate relationship with Twitter....please help!

Let me start by saying I'm a Twitter fan, and think we've only begun to scratch the surface of it's potential.

That said, as my Twitter base grows and I politely try to follow back the majority of people that for some reason have decided to follow me, I've run into a frustrating situation.

I'm following close to 1000 people and it's beginning to feel very disconnected, like we're all talking at each other.

This is no doubt mostly my fault as I don't spend a ton of time on Twitter. I used to use Twhirl, but found the constant update of Twitter stream far too distracting. I could lose large chunks of my day following all the fascinating tweets and links to even more interesting articles. So now I limit my Twitter visits to the occasional drop in, usually at beginning, mid and end of day.

And what I find is that I'm missing all the good stuff, which is buried in the clutter of thousands of tweets. So much so that if I want to see what different people I'm interested in are tweeting about, I have to go look them up.

I haven't actively added people in a long time, but am finding that around 10-15 people a day are somehow finding their way to me and I do have an auto-follow set up, which is hugely helpful.

So my question is how do the rest of you manage your Twitter flow? I'd love any suggestions to streamline things and make sure I'm seeing my favorite tweeters.

:) Pam

Comment by Jerry Albright on May 19, 2009 at 2:01pm: I think it's really just a matter of how much one human being can process. Frankly I find the sheer amount of data being exchanged on there is far more than I need. Imagine have 30,000 newspapers delivered each day. That's how I feel. It's just too much.

I seem to be logging onto Twitter less and less as I saw my daily phone time drop and my business activity right along with it. It's cool and everything - but my time is spent much better elsewhere.

Comment by Shawna Armstrong on May 20, 2009 at 9:37am: I recently became a huge twitter fan myself. Before diving in, I defined my specific purpose for using it, then tailored my usage to achieve it. For example, do you want to follow or amass a large following of candidates to fill, RT and provide referrals for your jobs? Are you targeting potential clients and / or industry colleagues to market and promote your work or business? Are you using it for social / entertainment purposes? My main use of Twitter at the moment is to learn from industry leaders about Twitter as a recruiting tool and the web in general as a recruiting, job search, networking and marketing tool. In order to gain the most from my follow list, I have been selective about who I follow to keep extraneous noise to a minimum. I currently follow only 159 people. I started by following people who I already followed in the industry via blogs and webinars etc... Through them, I found other great people who were influencing them to also follow. As my following grows, I periodically review the bios, websites and tweets of my new followers and only follow back if they're tweeting new, useful and interesting posts and links about recruiting and social media. If my twitter agenda changes, my approach to tweeting and following would have to change as well to meet my end goal.