I go through phases of getting and thinning.

One of my hobbies is collecting vinyl records, much to the chagrin of my lovely and tidy wife.  And it’s one of the few areas I’ve had the most difficulting in the thinning process.  But that’s just one example.

With social things like Twitter, I have much less difficulty unfollowing people.  In following, I go through phases where I’ll add 20 or so people at a time, based on linked conversation or any other random cue that makes me think they’d be interesting.  On the flipside, there’s typically three reasons I’ll unfollow someone; if I don’t know you or have never met you and your content is just not captivating to me at the moment, if you turn out to be just bonecrazy, or if you’re a complete Twitter railroader.. someone that just relentlessly posts, off you go.

I did alot of adding this weekend (Thanks TLT!)  I’m doing some thinning this morning.

Some people though, are enigmatic;  Scoble, for example.  I hate Scoble, I really do, no offense personally (I actually hope you keep doing exactly what you’re doing), he just makes my teeth itch.  However, I learn from Scoble, so I like to look in on his junk now and then.  He’s just one of those people that’s constantly into things and trying things, and one of the rare ones of those people that doesn’t hoarde his information, he’s a share-able sort.  So in his frequency of posting, I typically learn something new from time to time, so there’s the value for me.

[edit: Okay 4 reasons... if you're clearly a stats collector, advertising robot, or similar marketing slug; but typically I'm not following you to start with, but if you follow me, I will go out of my way to block you;  becuase I like that I'm decreasing your stats.]

This morning, I wake up, decide to check out some Twitter history in case anything blew up or Martians landed or whatever.  Did you know Twitter ‘Recent’ tab history only goes back 10 pages deep?  Well, from the main interface it does.  I had to find that out by backing over all the Scoble fluff to see if anyone I heart had anything recent to say.  Maybe they did, but I’ll never know.

I pick on Scoble, but I’ve got 10 or so of these highly chatty people I’m following.

So that’s where RSS comes in this morning.  I’m going Scoble’s main Twitter feed, subscribing him into my reader, so I can learn from his content, but then UNfollowing him so he’s not cluttering my local Twitter radar.  Same for Spin, sorry dude.  Prokofy, you too, back of the line.

One of the new necessary skills; management of the information overload.