Yesterday techcrunch broke some news which I found interesting, in respect of twitters long term business strategy.  Apparently twitter began issuing warning notices to members who are utilising the autofollow function within their account settings. (Link)

The reasoning it appears has to to with the usability of their system as a whole.  They go on to site specific problems with people being able to communicate effectively with thousands of followers.

twitterletter

Whether your a fan of reciprocal following or not really isn’t the debate I’m trying to create.  What I find more interesting is the fact that twitter as a business advocates on sign up, people they think you should be following.  In effect they are pushing specific twitter members profiles to new members.  You only need to view the accounts of Kevin Rose, Stephen Fry, to see the impact this promotion can have on follower numbers.

So is twitter trying to create a class system, where its alright for “celebrities” to preach to the masses, but not OK for the “citizens” that populate the twitterverse……

To me twitter is all about the NOISE!  I want to hear thousands of voices talking topics of interest to me.  The use of appropriate filters (in my case tweetdeck) enable me to filter that noise into appropriate “channels” of information.  So yes quite simply, I can manage thousands of followers, in fact I openly manage feeds of information into the wider community as well.  Ironically its twitters own failure to produce viable tools of their own, which is now leading them to question abuse of the system.