2008

Very early on in my Twitter usage I turned off all notices from the site. The problem was I that I was getting duplicate messages on several devices and most of the info wasn’t useful for me. This keeps the site in a mode where I need to actively check it to see what is new, if I’ve gotten messages or anything. I like that because it’s not interrupting me. Another result is I don’t really know who is following me on any given day. This if fine too, I don’t know who is reading my blog or looking at my flickr stream, no need for me to know who is reading my tweets. The other day I changed that after reading another approach and it’s been wild.

I don’t pay much attention to how many people are following me usually, I know there’s a lot and that’s about it. Turning on these notices has made it something I’m much more aware of. I did a little tracking and it looks like I have a net gain of about 5 followers a day. I’d assumed that was because 3-4 new people followed me each day, but actually there’s a ton more flux than that. Judging by the notices I started getting from Twitter it looks like between 10-15 new people follow me each day, which means 5-10 people are dropping me each day too. I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended, so I’m just sticking with neither.

That’s interesting, but even more so is the simple act of turning on these notices made me start thinking about something I don’t care about at all and something that really makes no difference. It’s mildly interesting from an informational standpoint, but on a bigger picture it’s kinda cruft. For me at least. I think I’ll be turning them back off shortly, but it was an interesting experiment for sure.