[exw]

<<Currently, as long as people are online, there's a certain guarantee that they will see it.>>

I understand your concern, but this seems to contradict reality... According to this article, only a small percentage of your followers actually see your Tweets: http://marketingland.com/facebook-twitter-impressions-90878

[sangnoir]

I think there are 2 types of twitter users. The first type follows many accounts and skim through the tweets with no effort to go through all of them. This feature is a Godsend for them.

The second type of twitter users, like myself, follow a short list of people, and we actively curate this list so that we can read all the tweets in our timeline. I have just realized that it is in Twitter's best interest if everyone was in the first group - which is likely the majority of users.

[alextgordon]

Back in 2009 the developer of Tweetie got so frustrated with the second group he made this site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090218122324/http://twitterisn...

[sangnoir]

It's preposterous for him to prescribe how others should use twitter. Besides, I don't read each and every email I get either.

The thing is I do not trust an algorithm (or popularity) to accurately tag what an "important" tweet is to me. So I tend to follow single-purpose accounts with high signal to noise ratio - if I follow you for your insights in algorithms; serial-tweeting your cat pics will get lead me to unfollow you. I know I miss out on a lot of C.Sci wisdom from people who tweet prodigiously, which is a shame

I wish twitter had user-defined 'channels' like @user/cuda and @user/cats so I can selectively follow a specific channel that interests me...